Don’t Worry Darling is a 2022 American psychological scifi thriller film directed by Olivia Wilde from a screenplay by Katie Silberman. The film stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine. The film follows an idyllic housewife living in a company town who begins to suspect a sinister secret being kept from its residents by the man who runs it. (Wikipedia)
S P O I L E R S
Don’t Worry Darling has been plagued by a string of controversies since rumours of cast conflicts surfaced during shooting. Add to this, the additional off-screen tension evident in the pre-release marketing amongst the cast, and the film has had a mountain to climb in respect of reaching out to its intended audience.
Which is a pity as on the face of it, Don’t Worry Darling aspires to the high concept scifi of the novels by Philip K Dick and William Gibson and films like The Truman Show, The Matrix, Dark City and Get Out. The quintessential ‘mind-fuck’ where things are not as they seem. Our main character Alice (Pugh) lives in an idyllic 50s-styled company town (Victory) with her husband Jack (Styles) with their neighbours reflecting similar lifestyles dictated by the town’s creator Frank (Pine).
READ OUR ANALYSES OF THE PERIPHERAL.
But of course, as we said, things are not as they seem. And eventually, Alice begins to be suspicious about the seemingly perfect life she has and the many unanswered questions that arise in her mind. When she refuses to be appeased, Alice is taken away for shock treatment to ‘cure’ her dissatisfaction. Up to that point, while it’s clear to the audience that Victory is a manufactured town like The Truman Show, the true extent of this fact is not made evident till the third act.
When the mystery is finally revealed, it makes no sense. Victory is a virtual reality created by Frank where Alice is kept prisoner by Jack. But as we see Alice simply lying on a bed with the device on her head and nothing else, how does she live without food and water in the real world? In addition, we never see the actual hardware capable of creating such a realistic virtual world and we are supposed to trust that Victory works because the film says it does. Nope. What about the crashing aircraft that was the inciting incident for Alice’s doubts? Never explained. Suspension of disbelief completely breaks down. A frustratingly amateurish attempt at high concept scifi.
Watch Don’t Worry Darling on Amazon.
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