A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.
Casting announcements surrounding Olivia Wilde’s next movie thrilled me. Early on, when Harry Styles replaced Shia LaBeouf, director Olivia Wilde said something that honored the necessity of healthy workplace environments. Her freshman film “Booksmart” cracked my ribcage from laughing so hard, and part of that success was having the right acting team to pull off such a fun flick. Her heavily stylized treatment felt extreme but novel. This same approach to a new story cuts against itself many times, and despite intentional recasting, the film’s talent feels somewhat wasted when the script hits so many of the same notes. “Don’t Worry Darling” centers itself on the central mystery too much, giving the viewers very little to cling to, and rests on the shoulders of Florence Pugh way too much.
Pugh plays Alice Chambers. She lives the idyllic life in Victory. She plays dutiful housewife to husband Jack Chambers (Harry Styles) by cleaning the house top to bottom, cooking him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and welcoming him home with a drink. Something about her Mad Men-styled life feels off and when she sees her neighbor, Margaret, take her own life, the rabbit hole swallows Alice wide. Alice starts to investigate this utopian colony’s creator, Frank, and suspects her housewife friends aren’t fully aware of their surroundings.
There is so much mystery in this film that it’s practically begging to tell us its answers. Instead, it spends the film’s first half establishing all the necessary elements to tear down. In the first thirty minutes, we capture Alice’s life, her friends, her house, and her husband. It takes a long while before any actual plot starts to set in motion, but when it does, it takes even longer to get any answers.
While I won’t give away the finale, this film has an exciting conceit at the center of it, rooted in some authentic ideas. It wastes those elements by surprising us towards the end of its run with the truth. Those secrets bear introspection and what could be a novel idea feels very rote by making it the act three curtain pull the film revolves around. There are plot events (a great betrayal) in the last fifteen minutes that never get explained and don’t feel fully realized. It’s a mess of an edit; with so much of the film relying solely on mood and suspicion, it starts to feel repetitive early on.
The real score for this film is its costuming and production design. Designer Arianne Phillips dug deep for this ’50s chic costuming. Everyone looks gorgeous. Pugh’s myriad dresses and perfect hairdos capture maybe a little too much of the golden sheen of the ’50s. Even Nick Kroll can look handsome in a perfectly tailored suit-and-tire. Katie Byron’s set design takes things a step further, incorporating the modern styling of older furniture with classical textures such as carpet, wood grain, and brown brick. Every piece used in the film, from the record player to the cocktail glasses, feels distinct and vibrant.
Florence Pugh carries this movie on her entire back. She almost singlehandedly takes the audience through this movie, lending as much credence as possible to a tired concept. The poor girl gasps, awes, sobs, and sighs her way through so much of the movie I started to worry for her. Maybe halfway through, Styles seems to realize his scene partner is much better than him and just exists to feed her performance. Character actors like Nick Kroll, Olivia Wilde, and Timothy Simons don’t add much more to the film and don’t even really affect the plot so much as they exist within this world. It’s troubling to see such talent feel wasted on bits that could’ve contributed to the idea rather than distract from it. Poor Chris Pine monologues his way through scenes oozing as much menace as he has charisma (and Chris Pine has a lot of charisma.) Still, he never actually DOES anything.
Wilde’s directorial style leans heavily toward an aestheticized storytelling bathed in splashes of effects. Her heavy dependency on needle drops worked in favor of “Booksmart,” but it feels like a crutch here. Scenes feel entirely motivated by music, and even music switches partway through scenes that seem to dictate the entire narrative tension or resolution. When so much of the film can change on a dime, it’s broadcasting too heavily how we should feel about it when the audience can guess another needle drop. It’s too much to observe. Too much to deal with.
“Don’t Worry Darling” feels like a story that needed another pass by an editor before it got produced. Too many things don’t relate. The story takes too long to get to its core dilemma. The entire conceit feels addressed too quickly, and the ending doesn’t provide enough resolution to feel earned. It’s a film full of mood and aesthetics but light on plot or character. It’s all the same several pieces of the puzzle shown over and over in different ways.
In Theaters Friday, September 23rd
