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Don't Worry Darling (2022)
'Don't Worry Darling' Lacks the Confidence and Flair to Execute Its Convoluted Story
Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, 'Booksmart', was a smart, interesting, and fun experience, that showed great work on behalf of Wilde and her team.
Unfortunately, her newest feature doesn't reach the lighting in a bottle that 'Booksmart' was. But, I don't think it was entirely Olivia's fault. The directing isn't amazing but it isn't terrible. I just think that the subject matter is terribly complicated to deal with, especially when 2/3 of your writing team were behind The Asylum's 'Titanic 2', which currently holds a 1.6/10 on imdb. In my opinion, even if the people behind this were experts, it still wouldn't be perfect... But since they aren't, this turned out pretty bad.
The concept is something out of a bottom tier 'Black Mirror' episode, and the way it's executed makes it something that just isn't worth watching. Florence Pugh carries the entire film on her back. Her performance is truly terrific, I just wish it wasn't wasted on such a mediocre movie.
The movie deals with several dream-like concepts, which on paper may sound cool, and even when you see them separately they look awesome. An example of this is that mirror scene, where Florence is crushed in between a wall and a window. But, the movie provides no real explanation to why this happened. So watching the scenes separately on youtube provides almost as much context as the film itself does. This is my biggest issue with the movie, the first hour feels like just "cool" scenes held together by a paper thin storyline. Even after that, the movie derails into something way more complex and layered that wilde couldn't properly juggle. Sure, the visuals are cool to look at, but there isn't a deeper meaning behind them, so it's all for nothing, and it leaves me craving more depth and explanations to why this is happening.
But, don't think I'm one of those people who wishes movies explain everything and leave nothing for audience interpretation. I love movies that leave you thinking day and night about the hidden meanings and underlying themes to the story. A good example of this is my favourite movie, '3 Women'. The story is so simple, yet so complex, and let's you develop your own interpretation of it. But, it does give some sort of explanation to what happen, it isn't just random, cool looking scenes interlaced with arguments and friends chatting about furniture.
Another thing that really annoys me is that this movie thinks it's way smarter than it really is. There are many moments in this where characters (mostly Chris Pine) are talking, and at the end the movie reveals it was all foreshadowing to the plot twist, but what he was saying was just a bunch of generic mumbo-jumbo that makes no sense, even with the context of the plot twist - which segues me into my next complaint, the plot twist. They couldn't have made up a dumber plot twist than this one. I'm not going to spoil anything but it's insane that anyone working on this thought the plot twist was well done or even worthwhile. Even though... yeah, it was kind of unexpected, it just didn't quite hit as hard as it should've, and felt totally out of place.
Finally, my last issue was the dialogue. It couldn't have been more plain and dumb. The lines, combined with most of the actor's poor line delivery make for some actual moments where I laughed out loud in the cinema. Moments that should have been serious and sometimes, even scary.
If you want to see this concept explored much better and more fleshed out, watch the 1975 film 'The Stepford Wives'. So much creepier and more memorable.