Directed by Olivia Wilde
On general release from 23rd September 2022
Reviewed by Nick Daly
Picturesque suburbia with touches of 1950’s Americana. Husbands driving to work in a methodical fashion. Their wives waving them off before a daily routine of household chores and cocktail parties. We’ve seen this film before. Numerous times. Perhaps most iconically in The Stepford Wives, where it was used to create a satire about man’s fear of women’s liberation. Later on, American Beauty (1999) would adopt it to expose a rotten superficial core to the American Dream, before Desperate Housewives (2004) would take it to television and after 8 seasons would run the premise into the ground. In 2022, what could Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling possibly do or say about this now exhausted formula? Not much, apparently.
Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) live in this picturesque suburbia, a company town named Victory. Katie Byron’s production design is a visual delight, with palm trees and pastel colours giving 50’s glamour mixed with sun-drenched California. The husbands take their aforementioned trips to the workplace, enigmatically named the Victory Project, and made even more so when we learn that their wives are discouraged to ask questions about it. Meanwhile, Frank (Chris Pine) oversees the whole operation akin to a cult leader, hosting parties and giving speeches with an ominous undertone to grinning, well-dressed guests.
At one of the parties, Alice notices her friend Margaret acting strangely and being outcast by the residents of Victory. She learns that Margaret had ventured outside of the town, into the surrounding desert, and has never been the same since. A few days later while riding public transport, Alice notices a small plane crashing into the desert. Appalled by the driver’s lack of reaction, she heads in the direction of the crashed plane and comes across the Headquarters: a James Bond-like building with mirrored windows and an unusual red light emanating from within. Alice wakes up in her home after the encounter, unable to remember how she returned. Later on, she begins to experience strange hallucinations. She’s beginning to act like Margaret.
These hallucinations, like the film itself, seem to be littered with film references. It’s difficult not to think of Black Swan (2010) when Alice experiences peculiar reflections in the mirror while ballet training. There’s also more than a hint of Midsommar (2019) (the film that apparently made Wilde choose Pugh for the lead role) when Alice watches in horror as a person falls from a roof, echoing the anxiety-inducing cliff jumping scene in the former film. Perhaps these references are so glaring because Don’t Worry Darling is simply not strong enough to stand by itself. You’ve seen everything before, and you’ve seen it a lot better, as the film is not so much homaging these films as feeling like a pale imitation.
What these hallucinations lack in originality, however, they gain in dynamism. When Alice, preparing lunch, suddenly begins wrapping cling film around her head, constricts her breathing in the process, visceral sound effects ensure that the audience is almost unable to breathe with her. Certainly, this dynamism is also thanks to Florence Pugh, continuing to prove her capabilities as an actress with each film she makes. She makes the most out of the material provided, conveying intense emotions even when the film doesn’t necessarily deserve it, and is ultimately the strength that holds the weak, crumbling narrative together.
People have often remarked of Pugh’s likeness to an early-career Kate Winslet. Short of being two great, ballsy British actresses, I haven’t truly seen similarities until this film. It’s helped by the parallels to Winslet’s 1950’s-set film Revolutionary Road (2008), where Pugh and Winslet not only resemble each other with their golden skin and locks, but also possess a similar uncertainty about their seemingly idyllic surroundings and what their life is supposed to be. Revolutionary Road is the superior film, brazenly tackling issues about the nature of existence and a woman’s place in the world in ways Don’t Worry Darling barely attempts. An essay on that film would be much more interesting, but nevertheless I must discuss this one.
In Don’t Worry Darling’s most effective sequence, Jack pulls up a chair for himself at the top of the table at a dinner party, only for Alice to brazenly push in and sit on it herself. What follows is her casual attempt to expose the lies and contradictions of life in Victory, dismantling the perfect dinner party set-up and in turn dismantling the fabric of everyone’s reality. “It’s all about control,” Alice states, acted by Pugh with typical conviction, but it unfortunately rings hallow in the context of the film. It’s no accident that Pugh and Chris Pine sit on opposite ends of the table, their talent and magnetism anchoring the scene and subsequently the film itself. Their scenes together briefly elevate the film to another level, exposing a potentially great film underneath the layers of mediocrity and ensuring everything around them, including co-star Harry Styles, appear sub-par.
With every component of the film feeling derivative, Don’t Worry Darling appears to be heading towards a Black Mirror-style reveal, hopefully, surely, turning the overly-familiar narrative on its head to reveal something new and fresh about it. It seems promising. Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart promised the beginnings of an interesting career. Pugh and Styles are two of the most exciting stars of their generation. Chris Pine has been choosing some intriguing projects lately. Something will surely come out of this. Yet, when that reveal arrives in the film’s final act, it’s just as uninspired as everything that came before it. In the process, it adds more filmic references to its growing list, but these films being two of the greatest films in recent times, The Truman Show (1998) and The Matrix (1999), unfortunately it does nothing to salvage the film.
Unfathomably, the film seems content enough to not even attempt to delve into the concept of this plot unveiling and give any element of substance. It appears to hint at themes of patriarchy, feminism and the desire to escape reality but denies them any depth. These themes were not exciting cinematic themes ten years ago, so to offer them to a 2022 audience in their most basic form is insufficient, quite frankly. In a world of endless streaming brimming with innovative sci-fi media, this lack of imagination in a feature film is almost inexcusable. The creators of the film must live in the simplistic, 1950’s bubble of Victory and have not woken up to the reality of what audiences come to expect. They should worry, darling.