![]() ![]() But as “Don’t Worry Darling” reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. What’s ironic is that Frank and Shelley’s mantra for their worshipful citizens is one of control: the importance of keeping chaos at bay, of maintaining symmetry and unity, of living and working as one. Each is the other’s equal in terms of precision and technique. Pugh and Pine verbally circle and jab at each other. Once Alice finds the courage to confront Frank about her suspicions, though, it results in the film’s most powerful scene. ![]() ![]() Whatever you’re thinking might be at play here, it’s probably more imaginative than what it turns out to be. The heavy-handed score from John Powell becomes more insistent and plodding, telling us how to feel at every turn. They grow repetitive and wearying rather than disturbing. In time, Wilde relies too heavily on these visuals: black-and-white clips of Busby Berkeley-style dancers, or close-ups of eyeballs. Images come to her in impressionistic wisps and nightmares that startle her awake in the dark. Her anxiety evolves from jittery paranoia to legitimate terror the more she discovers about this place, and Pugh makes it all palpable. She brings some enjoyable swagger and humor to this increasingly creepy world.īut little by little, Alice begins to question her reality. Wilde herself plays Alice’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Bunny, with cat-eye makeup and a conspiratorial grin. The wives, meanwhile, send them off with a kiss before embarking on a day of vacuuming and bathtub scrubbing, then perhaps a dance class, and definitely some day drinking. The men leave for work in the morning, lunchboxes in hand, on the way to top-secret jobs at the Victory Project, which they can’t discuss with their wives. Her husband is the town’s founder, Frank, and he’s played with the devious purr of a self-satisfied cult leader by Chris Pine.Įvery day is the same, and that’s meant to be the allure. A better way,” Gemma Chan’s glamorous Shelley assures her guests at one of the movie’s many soirees. Styles’ appeal at least fits the premise of “Don’t Worry Darling,” in which a select group of forward-thinking families has moved to a planned Palm Springs community to create their own society in the mid-1950s. His presence is too forceful, too unsettling.) (Interestingly, Shia LaBeouf was first cast in the role, but it’s hard to imagine him here as the earnest, young company man on the rise. But when it comes time for him to summon the emotional depth he needs for his more intense scenes opposite Pugh, he’s distractingly outmatched. Granted, his character is meant to be empty and pretty, and he definitely looks the part with his slim suits and sleek, angular features. She is indeed a powerhouse, which makes it that much more glaringly obvious that Styles was not yet ready for this assignment. When will people finally learn to listen to Florence Pugh? Watching Pugh once again function as the clear-eyed voice of reason-and watching her get gaslit when she tries to warn everyone about the sinister undercurrents within a joyful setting-also brings to mind her visceral work in “ Midsommar,” one of the key performances that signaled to the world she’s one of the finest young actresses of her generation. You can see the various pieces being pulled together from better source material-a bit of “The Stepford Wives,” a whole lot of “Mad Men,” and a bunch of movies that would serve as spoilers to list them. This is not a new idea, but then again, there aren’t many new ideas here. “Don’t Worry Darling” aims to explore the tyranny of the patriarchy, disguised as domestic bliss. She also wrote Wilde’s directorial debut, the delightfully raunchy comedy “ Booksmart,” which had a focus and an emotional authenticity that are lacking in this thriller. Discovering what’s actually going on raises more questions than it answers, and it shines a harsh light on the half-baked notions in the script from Katie Silberman. I may have groaned audibly, “Ugh, really? That’s it?” at a recent press screening. The revelation of what that something is, though, results in such a shrug of annoyance and disappointment that it very nearly ruins the entire experience in retrospect.
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