Don't Worry Darling

Movie Name: Don't Worry Darling
Year of Release: 2022
Director: Olivia Wilde
Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll, Sydney Chandler, Kate Berlant, Kiki Layne, Asif Ali, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons, Steve Berg, Ari'el Stachel
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 3
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Synopsis and Review

Olivia Wilde's directorial sophomore effort was of course surrounded by all sorts of noise, including the dismissal of Shia LaBeouf from the role that was then taken over by Harry Styles, to the odd series of events that occurred at the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Nonetheless the expectation was considerable, particularly since her feature directorial debut, "Booksmart", was such a fantastic film. "Don't Worry Darling" focuses its narrative on a couple, comprised of Alice and Jack Chambers. They are a loving couple and live in what seems to be a suburb in California in the late 1950s/early 1960s. The husbands leave for work every morning, while the wives take charge of housework and the children when that's the case. They all have very active social lives, all around elaborate dinner parties and cocktails. Things start to take a darker turn firstly with Alice's friend Margaret. She went into the desert with her child, resulting in his apparent death, though she claims otherwise. Adding to this, Alice sees a plane crash in the desert, and rushes to help. She stumbles onto headquarters (where Jack works), and experiences surreal hallucinations. Margaret confides in her that she has seen the same thing. After a dramatic incident with Margaret, Alice becomes even more suspecting of something being terribly wrong, with her suspicions being particularly hurled at Frank, the director of Victory, where her husband works. Her suspicions lead to a particularly tense evening where the Chambers' have a small gathering for dinner, with Alice eventually pleading with Jack for them to leave such a place. While he seems to agree with her, the next day she is taken by Victory employees and sent to an institute where she goes through electroshock therapy. The therapy sparks some memories of her in a different timeline, where she's an overwork medical specialist, and Jack is her unemployed partner. She finally realizes, that Victory is indeed a simulated world, where Jack and the other men lead their version of perfect lives. However Alice isn't ready to settle for this version of reality.

There's quite a lot happening in this narrative, which is partially Twilight Zone inspired and also gives some nods to the work of M. Night Shyamalan. While Olivia Wilde was clearly ambitious in what she wanted to tackle, the output however is a bit all over the place. And part of the problem lies with the characters that inhabit this narrative. Alice who is the center of the narrative, starts out as a seemingly non-confrontational individual, and suddenly shifts into a paranoia which increases since everyone seems to be disregarding what she's witnessing. Nothing much is initially exposed about her or any of the characters to add to the surprise or the twist that the script contains. However the issue with this approach lies with the fact that why would anyone care for these characters who are as shallow and thinly characterized throughout most of the narrative? By the time the twist comes along in the final act, some additional context is provided, but not much to actually explain why these characters are who and where they are. Even the more sinister ones, such as Chris Pine's Frank, aren't given much to do. In an attempt to wrap the narrative with a nice bow, plot points are quickly shedded, resulting in a film that ultimately lacks both character definition and an actual message/statement and point of view. The cast is a bit all over the place as well. While Florence Pugh is able to carry an effective and constant simmering tension, Harry Styles is very limited in his acting skills and fails to give Jack any resounding presence. Chris Pine and Gemma Chan ultimately give the film some well deserved color and even dark humor. The cinematography from Matthew Libatique is stunning, as are the costumes from Arianne Phillips. It's a disconcerting film, one that had a lot of potential, but probably not a good marriage of material and point of view for this director.