While the drama and controversy surrounding Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (2022) isn’t pretty, the film sure is. But beauty truly is what’s on the inside and no amount of symmetrical eye candy can make up for the empty and weirdly comedic attempt at recreating a Jordan Peele like thriller.
The film follows a married couple, Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles), in their utopian experimental community in an idyllic 1950’s neighborhood where the women keep face and the men work hard to sustain their posh lifestyle. Every morning, Jack drives off to work as an engineer for a top secret project—the victory project. But when Alice’s perfect world starts to disintegrate, she begins to question everything she knows.
In her first feature, Booksmart (2019), Wilde dipped her toes into an oversaturated genre — the coming-of-age films— and managed to create something fresh that showcased her innate ability to understand and portray human behavior on a personal level. The film’s sincerity and undeniable charm elicited hope for Wilde to strike gold again with a bigger budget with Don’t Worry Darling. Instead, she seems to have trapped herself in a genre that she doesn’t understand.
For a film listed under the psychological thriller genre, there is absolutely nothing thrilling about Don’t Worry Darling. Even the tried and tested genre stereotypes Wilde employs to build suspense fail dramatically. Music that blares through every scene to tell the audience exactly how they should feel is accompanied by editing that is jarring, confusing, and so bad it makes you wish you were watching the raw footage instead. The incessant repetition of scenes including an artsy shot of eggs and ballet dancers from your worst nightmare, comes off as lazy, almost like a film student's first attempt at capturing the mundane with limited ideas and footage.
It is clear, however, that Wilde is not without talent, for Don’t Worry Darling is not a terrible film. Wilde is able to craft an atmosphere that is infused with passion, romance, and intrigue. She captures a feeling, a moment in time and transports the audience to it. She does this with Booksmart through her interpretation of high school, and she pulls it off again by capturing the spirit of 1950’s California in Don’t Worry Darling. The production design, makeup, and wardrobe combined with Matthew Libateque’s visuals is a sight to behold. Wilde, however, loses herself in the world she created. So much so that it seems she forgot that if visual splendor is all movie goers desired then they would be better off at an art museum.
It doesn’t help that the screenplay is painfully short sighted. Messy, incomplete, and devoid of purpose, the film attempts to tackle large themes like patriarchy using the thriller genre as a vehicle. Instead it leaves behind a muddled mess that feels like an extended trailer. That being said, the film does manage to entertain, even if it is for the wrong reasons — Harry Styles. Styles gives just enough to the role for it to be accepted as acting. The performance comes off at times as a deer lost in headlights and sadness is an emotion Styles seems to be incapable of performing with conviction. Ironic how his on-screen persona was completely lacking any charisma — a trait he is famous for and one that would have made the acting less painful to endure. The miscast is largely to do with the baggage that comes with a name like Harry Styles because the audience cannot suspend their disbelief long enough to accept that this famous persona is Jack. Ultimately, he could not breathe life into Jack and begs the question : “Would Shia Lebouf have elevated this film?”
Florence Pugh, however, disappears in her role as Alice. She seems to be the only one who understood the tone and the ambition of the film. She grasped onto what little she could of the poor screenplay and gave a well-rounded and gripping performance. Another actor that was gravely underutilized was Chris Pine who oozed mystery and allure. He’s glamorous, sleek, clean, and perfect. Pine carries himself with a silent confidence that bursts when he’s next to Pugh. A scene with Pugh and Pine’s character’s conversing was electric and arguably one of the better parts of the film. Despite the immense talent Pine so clearly possessed, the morality and motivations of his character remains severely underexplored, contributing to the many plot holes.
The entire film had plenty of potential that was left untapped. It’s hard to pinpoint where things went wrong apart from the half baked screenplay, miscasting, plot holes, terrible sound design, haphazard and aimless editing, unending filler footage, and…. you get the point. However, the film cannot be discredited for its attempt at exploring some deeper questions about happiness and what it means to be truly happy. Is happiness autonomy? If you had every comfort you could dream of, would you still be happy? While the film is on the nose with its commentary it still manages to keep the audience entertained enough to want to sit through the two hour run time. Whether that goes to the production design and camera team, Florence Pugh, or even Wilde’s talent itself is up for discussion. But one thing’s for sure — Don’t Worry Darling is a painful miss of what could have been an insanely wild(e) ride.
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