Don't Worry Darling Movie Review

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

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Written by: Katie Silberman (screenplay by), Carey Van Dyke & Shane Van Dyke and Katie Silberman (story by)
Directed by: Olivia Wilde
Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, KiKi Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Timothy Simons
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.

Verdict
I really like what this movie wants to do, but there have been similar movies recently so I guessed early on where this was going. That causes this to drag as I wait for the reveal. You could cut thirty minutes out of this, and that would only strengthen the movie. This is a fantasy movie masquerading as a different type of fantasy. You're going to know early this has a twist, and Pugh and Pine are great in this. As long as I waited for the twist, I thought the ending was rushed.
It depends.

Review
This opens with a dinner party at Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack's (Harry Styles) that seems to be set in the '50s. Based on the premise alone I'm skeptical of everything. This is some model community, but immediately questions arise. The men just drive through the desert to work? Why is this community completely surrounded be deserts and mountains? All of these questions and just the feel of this community make it seem fake. When a woman in the community begins asking questions, there's no question something is wrong here.

Florence Pugh, Harry Styles play Alice, Jack

Chris Pine is great as Frank, the  big boss that runs this community. He's not in the movie very long, but feels like a main character with how effective he is in that role. He talks endlessly with substance-less words. His warnings just generate more questions. What is this community, what do they do here?

That's the thing with this movie. We know from almost the first scene things aren't right, and this movie keeps us in the dark for way too long. This feels like The Truman Show or Antebellum. The problem with movies like this is that I've seen so many of them it's easy to recognize the tells. That's not a problem unless, like this movie, the audience isn't given enough credit.

This is obviously social commentary as Alice begins to question her reality as a subservient '50s housewife. Everyone tries to gaslight her into believing she's imagining the strange occurrences she witnesses. It's these moments where we can derive a comparison between the world this movie depicts and the real world that works best.

Chris Pine plays Frank

Finally Alice faces off against Frank. It's such a great scene, and because of this scene I really wanted to know more about Frank. It's a real disservice this movie doesn't give him more backstory, or at least show us who he truly is. As fun as this scene is, it takes too long to arrive.

This movie is longer than it needs to be. It's easy to see what's coming, and it didn't have to be so obvious. This goes for something very physical and scary when it could have gone unnerving and subtle. This certainly has some great moments. Once the wheels come off, it becomes very apparent what's at play. The realizations Alice has about what's happening and the complete denial and ignorance from Jack is telling. I kept waiting for the reveal, but once that happens this moves very quickly. There was a quick exchange Alice has with her best friend that really deserved more time to develop.

Florence Pugh plays Alice

I do have a lot of questions about the mechanics of how this plot works as presented. It's inevitable with a premise like this.

A common refrain is that there are three phases to creating a movie's story; writing, directing, and editing. This needed a bit more time on the edit to really focus this. All the pieces are there, but it delays the big punch for a bit too long. That and similar movies prevent this from being as unique as it wants to be.