A Reel Review: DON'T WORRY DARLING

So far, actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde’s second film, DON’T WORRY DARLING, has been gaining a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons. Negative media coverage, click-bait headlines, and a lot of he-said, she-said has been going on stemming from the film’s troubled production and feuding cast members. Now that the film is in theatres, it’s finally time to judge it on its own merits. 

 

Alice (Florence Pugh), and her husband Jack (Harry Styles), are enjoying their lives in their perfect, 1950’s neighborhood named Victory; a town designed by Harry’s employer Frank (Chris Pine). After the death of one of their neighbors, Alice begins to suspect that something is wrong in their picture-perfect lives…

 

Directed by Wilde and written by Katie Silberman, who penned Wilde’s successful feature debut BOOKSMART (2019), DON’T WORRY DARLING is a picturesque mystery that looks like it has fallen out of the magazine pages of old. Alice and Jack are having the time of their lives, having cocktail and pool parties nearly every day and night and unable to keep their hands off each other. It doesn’t take long for things to seem a little off, as things just seem too perfect even for the 1950’s. The men happily leave for their jobs in the morning, leaving the wives at home to cook and clean, and eventually greet their husbands back at the door with a roast in the oven and a cocktail in their hand whilst wearing an accessible skirt. 

 

Once Alice begins to suspect something is wrong and questions her husband’s secretive job, she is quickly put in her place by her friends and neighbors. Wilde and Silberman are playing with themes of what most men would prefer out of their wives; stay in your lane, feed me, stay out of my world. These are delicate themes to explore but the film works them with a sledgehammer. The points are heavy-handed and the audience can suspect something is wrong with Victory long before Alice does. This is a sin, as a film should never let the audience get ahead. 

 

Wilde shows good chops behind the camera. The film looks gorgeous, and the scenes of tension and conflict build up nicely. As Alice gets deeper into her doubting of her reality, DON’T WORRY DARLING gets into weird territory with random images and odd, out-of-body happenings…with not all of them explained by movie’s end (more on that in a bit). The music by John Powell is outstanding, and the sound effects/mixing done is unnerving and very well done. 

 

Acting is great for the most part. Florence Pugh puts on a display and once again stakes her claim as one of the best actresses working today. Chris Pine is a little one-note but fine. Harry Styles is passable, but shows his inexperience when having to face-off against Pugh, and a scene where he is asked to cry is downright awful. Wilde herself appears as Alice’s best friend and is very good, and Gemma Chan comes in as Frank’s wife and pulls a few surprises. 

 

DON’T WORRY DARLING is a mystery; the answer to what Victory really is, is what Alice needs to find out. The big reveal is two-fold, with the first so-called twist a little obvious to anyone who has ever seen a movie before. It still would have worked fine but then the film takes that reveal an extra step, and it’s an extra step that ruins it all. The big final solution doesn’t survive under scrutiny, and reveals a lot of plot holes and several untied threads that were dangling in front of us through the whole movie. It’s a frustrating and unsatisfying ending, and it’s time for DON’T WORRY DARLING to get attention for its share of merits (there are many), and demerits (just as many). 

 

BOTTOM LINE: Rent it