Editor’s note: New Times Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal and Calendar Editor Caleb Wiseblood wrote Split Screen this week while Glen and Anna Starkey took a break.
Olivia Wilde (Booksmart) directs this mystery about Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh), a 1950s housewife living with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles), in a utopian experimental community. (122 min.)
Caleb The wait is finally over. After months of gossip surrounding on-set and off-set drama during its production, Don’t Worry Darling is out, and we got to see it behind a row of Harry Styles fanatics on opening day. Nearly everything Styles says or does in the new thriller was met with an ooh or aah from the group. This would have been a bigger distraction if he wasn’t off screen more often than the film’s trailers suggest. The majority of times we see Styles’ suit-and-tie-cladded character, Jack, he’s either leaving for work or coming back home to his wife, Alice, played by Florence Pugh, who spends most of her days at the house cleaning, cooking, questioning her own reality, and sinking deeper and deeper into a state of all-encompassing paranoia. Unexplainable hallucinations begin invading Alice’s daily routine, and lingering, unanswered questions about Jack’s “top-secret” job makes matters worse. The couple lives in a 1950s desert suburb, where nearly every man in town, minus service workers, bus drivers, etc., is an engineer at the Victory Project, a manufacturer that specializes in the development of “progressive materials.” Alice’s Truman Show-esque quest to uncover the truth about the company and her own surroundings kept me on my toes long enough to give this surreal spectacle a solid thumbs up. Director Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling is a Wilde ride, with enough unexpected twists and turns to outweigh its occasional flaws.
Bulbul Ever wondered if San Luis Obispo has a thriving Harry Styles fan base? We found the answer to that question! Hordes of girls hooted every time the Brit popped up on-screen with a clunky American accent. My favorite moment was someone screaming, “Wish it were me!” when Styles shared a steamy makeout session with Pugh. Anyway, once I drowned out that background noise, I realized Don’t Worry Darling is a beautifully shot, West Coast version of Stepford Wives. Pugh and Styles are reminiscent of Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick, but with a twist I definitely didn’t see coming. It’s a searing look into gender politics and spousal control. How often have we heard someone romanticize the “good ol’ days” like the 1950s? To me, Don’t Worry Darling pokes holes in that yearning. Want to go back to the ’50s? Don’t forget about all the baggage that comes with the decade, which a frightening number of people are more than happy to embrace because it gives them the upper hand.
Caleb With a critics’ approval rating of 38 percent and audience score of 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Don’t Worry Darling seems to be polarizing viewers. Whether or not Styles’ massive fanbase is responsible for boosting up the audience score, count me in as an unbiased supporter in that regard. I don’t think I could name more than two of his songs, but as an actor, I previously liked his supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. The real star is Pugh, however, who is amazing in this film, and the biggest reason I recommend seeing it in theaters. Pugh’s best work is still in Midsommar, but she gives a phenomenal performance here as a similar character to her role in the former, as someone trapped in a horrific, emotional spiral. Pugh and Styles have great chemistry, and Chris Pine is perfectly creepy as Jack’s mysterious employer, Frank, the founder of the Victory Project. My big complaint about Frank is he only speaks in off-putting metaphors and cult leader-isms, even in public at backyard barbecues and company functions. It’s as if he wants people to suspect something sinister is going on.
Bulbul I agree! If you’ve taken all the trouble to dupe a bunch of people into thinking their reality is enviable, maybe don’t be outrageously on-the-nose about your secret evil scheme. It’s the Achilles’ heel of every movie villain, and it brought Don’t Worry Darling to an abrupt end though there was plenty of room to keep going. The film has some loose threads that left me scratching my head at the end. Maybe, it’s foreshadowing for a sequel, maybe it’s high art, or maybe it’s sheer laziness. I’m going with the latter. But, before I could protest further about Styles’ slipping accent (he completely forgets about it 20 minutes into the plot, by the way), Don’t Worry Darling cleverly sidesteps that hole by making it a central part of the storyline. Still, the lead-up to this flick was so immersed in pop culture controversy that the aftertaste is underwhelming even though there are plenty of nail-biting moments. This could have been a thrilling addition to the Final Girl sub genre of movies, but misdirected marketing subjected Don’t Worry Darling to the M. Night Shyamalan mistreatment, complete with the signature twist. Δ
Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal and Calendar Editor Caleb Wiseblood wrote Split Screen this week. Send comments to gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 9, 2022.