Is 'Don't Worry Darling' As Bad As Everybody Says It Is?
That depends on whether you're a critic or a human being.
This review may contain spoilers.
Initially, I felt zero need to see Don’t Worry Darling, the product of an unholy union between Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, and Olivia Wilde.
I’m not a big Olivia Wilde fan. I think she’s forgettable in most of her roles. And when I found out she’s an heiress (à la Megan Ellison, who can personally bankroll any project she could possibly imagine), my opinion grew even chillier.
I’m from the “art is pain” school of creativity, and I find it difficult to believe that being a nepo baby is particularly painful.
But after reading a Vanity Fair interview with Wilde in which she flatly denies every possible rumor and vociferously praises both Pugh and Styles (which, I have to admit, made me like her a little more), I finally decided that I had to see whether all the brouhaha surrounding the production of DWD affected the film in any way, or really, had anything to do with the film at all.
If you ignore whatever the hell was going on with “The Spitting” at the Venice Film Festival, and if you further ignore the blatant misogyny (not to mention plain ol’ jealousy) heaped on Wilde as a result of her relationship with the much younger Harry Styles, the film’s problem was mostly one of marketing.
Calling M. Night Shamylan
How do you market a film with a twist ending that, if known, would completely change the entire tenor of the movie and basically ruin it?
Imagine if Westworld (the OG Yul Brynner version) had been marketed as a cowboy movie.
“Yes, but….”
Don’t Worry Darling was marketed as a “psychological thriller” about a woman being “possibly gaslighted” by a “cult” in the 1950s.
“Well, yeah, but….”
Slap a dead fish title on top of the basic impossibility of describing what the movie is actually about and you get a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer — a score that is completely unjustified — with a healthier 74% audience score from the two people who actually saw it.
If the script was admittedly inspired by movies like Inception and The Matrix, then everyone should have come right out at the beginning and said:
“This is a science fiction film. If you like science fiction in the vein of The Matrix, you should see this film.”
The twist is still preserved, whole and intact, but a completely different ticket-buying public shows up at the theater.
Does Don’t Worry Darling make sense? Well, no. But fortunately, I’m not one of those people who think that a film has to make 100% logical sense in order to be good. Does A Clockwork Orange make sense? Not really. Maybe it’s the almost complete lack of plot that makes me think that.
But Clockwork is still a great movie for two reasons (three if you count a completely insane Malcolm McDowell): (1) The fabulously mod set and costume design, and (2) because it’s the movie that basically invented gratuitous violence.
I love set design, costumes, and cinematography above all else, which explains how I’ve waded through every single Terrence Malick film.
The set and costume design of DWD is a fun, retro, candy-colored nightmare built entirely upon Republican rhetoric about how great America used to be when women knew their place. (I’m almost positive the cul-de-sac where Jack and Alice live was also home to Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph in the Amazon Prime series, Forever. RIP.)
And that’s the movie’s biggest problem. At its heart, Don’t Worry Darling is a stab (literally) at taking down the far-right, white male establishment as embodied by both Harry Styles (ironically enough) and Chris Pine.
But not all of the women in the little company town of Victory are on board with this plan. Some of them, most notably Wilde’s character, want the life of a subservient sex slave. She has her reasons. But still, the film is sending a decidedly mixed message.
And for a very long time — too long, in fact — Pugh’s character is fine with the status quo as well. The sex is good enough to waste a perfectly good meal for (please, not the pot roast), and she has friends to hang out with by the pool under a perfect desert sky. They have parties. They shop. What’s not to like?
All the women of Victory need to do is not ask questions and their every need will be met. Hence, the title:
Don’t worry, darling. I’ll take care of everything.
As Pugh’s character starts to see the cracks in the veneer, the implication is that she’s somehow stronger-willed than the others, including KiKi Layne’s Margaret, who commits suicide in order to escape.
Pugh is Neo, The One who will bring everything crashing down.
The Problem With Pugh
I love Florence Pugh. Her choice of roles, not so much.
Midsommar was great, but it was definitely cranked to 11 on the wierdometer.
And then there’s The Wonder, which one day, God willing, I might make it all the way through. I just couldn’t take one more scene of Pugh chewing.
And chewing.
And chewing.
Yes, I get it, the kid in The Wonder is supposed to be somehow staying alive without eating. I understand. Please don’t make me watch Pugh chewing her cud one more time.
Maybe A Good Person will solve the problem Hollywood seems to have with casting Florence in roles that fit her particular set of skills.
(*watching trailer*) Probably not.
What The What Now?
I watched Don’t Worry Darling from beginning to end, barely even looking at my phone, and I have questions.
Why is Pugh’s character, Alice, a surgeon? Is she a surgeon? And if she is a surgeon, why do she and her husband Jack (Styles) live in an apartment that looks like it’s under the L?
What did she even see in the “real” Jack, an unshaven mess who probably smelled bad? Why would Alice, a maybe surgeon, be with a guy like him in that shithole of an apartment?
And the less said about the last scene of the movie, the better. It’s fun when a director doesn’t know how to end a movie, slaps on 30 seconds of B-roll, and calls it a day. I’m not even sure what I was looking at. That’s not good.
Despite everything, I recommend watching Don’t Worry Darling. It held my attention, the set design and costumes were fun, and it stars Harry Styles.
I mean, I’m old. I’m not dead.
It’s on HBO Max or on Amazon as a rental. Warner Bros should pay me for trying to save this movie LOL
You’re right- marketed poorly. Psychological thriller is not something I want to see. But based on this, maybe I’ll give it a go. Is it streaming somewhere?