Review: 'Don't Worry Darling' has Styles over substance
Remember when Geraldo opened Al Capone's vault, and it was empty? Hold that thought.
It’s tempting to doubt the modern endurance of the adage “all press is good press." And yet, here’s “Don’t Worry Darling,” the comma-deficient title that sparks images of Harry Styles spitting on Chris Pine, instead of actual curiosity about the film’s plot. Warner Bros. has marketed this movie as a blockbuster — you, too, can watch the pop idol of millions tap dance on the same IMAX screen where Vin Diesel regularly makes muscle cars fly.
If director Olivia Wilde’s 1950s-flavored thriller was game-changingly good, or even "Showgirls" bad, then the sordid firestorm surrounding the film could cement its place in the pop culture canon. Instead, “Don’t Worry Darling” is neither. Considering the cultural conversation, it’s something stranger: fine.
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In a desert-bound suburbia (seemingly without a corresponding “urb”), Jack and Alice Chambers (Styles and Florence Pugh) live in domestic bliss straight out of “The Donna Reed Show.” Theirs is a company town, where suited men daily depart the cul-de-sac in a choreographed commute to the mysterious Victory Project. They’re apparently working on something top secret that will revolutionize the world. At the head of the project is Frank (Pine), a smug Jordan Peterson type putting the mess in messianic.
Meanwhile, the women stay behind at home to keep everything flawless: the garden, the dinner table, their outfits and their dutiful incuriosity about the ominous tremors pulsing through the ground. It’s like an America where “The Feminine Mystique” never happened, or one where everyone watched “The Wicker Man” and took away all the wrong lessons.
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Occasionally, one of the women in the town starts to question this isolated idyll, inevitably spreading that doubt to someone else before they mysteriously disappear. Alice takes note of the questions asked by the shunned, saturnine Margaret (KiKi Layne), and the cracks in her and Jack’s perfect world become fault lines.
Have you ever watched an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” or maybe “The Outer Limits”? I would never denigrate short-form speculative fiction, especially the kind that revels in allegory. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”? I’ll meet them there. “To Serve Man”? I’ll bring the condiments. “Don’t Worry Darling” pushes no boundaries of this genre; it’s a slight bit of moralizing sci-fi that escaped whatever anthology it belonged to and scammed its way into a two-hour runtime and a Venice Film Festival premiere.
Wilde’s take (from a story by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke, punched up and scripted by Katie Silberman) blazes not a single trail, which isn't to say it’s unenjoyable. It’s lean, mean fun, and it’s gorgeous to behold. Wilde is an exceptional visual artist, building a retro fantasy into which a viewer feels dangerously drawn. The eerie perfection of this world ripples through expertly arranged images — a symmetrical flock of classic cars giving chase through the arid wastes, or ghoulish chorus girls spinning into a shadowy kaleidoscope.
And in a story that’s going through the motions, Pugh's charging through with a broadsword. Her Alice is so obviously exceptional, so charismatic, that as her chafing against sinister conformity escalates, your investment is assured. It might help that Styles plays drippy Jack like a potato.
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When “Don’t Worry Darling” reveals its twist — not really a spoiler to say that something was rotten in this sci-fi Denmark — that unremarkability becomes more of a problem (or a plot point, if you're generous). Just like any good episode of “The Twilight Zone,” there's a parable afoot. In “Don’t Worry Darling,” it’s an admirable (if broad and kinda toothless) condemnation of the online radicalization of incels in the real world. “Black Mirror” did it earlier, and better.
Predictability isn’t always a sin. But in a high-concept thriller that’s got the whole world buzzing, it’s giving, “I put on my period-accurate circle skirt for this?”
If you see 'Don't Worry Darling'
Grade: B-
Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde Director: Olivia Wilde
Rated: R for sexuality, language and violent content
Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Watch: In theaters Sept. 23
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Don't Worry Darling review: Olivia Wilde film has Styles over substance
