Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll, and Gemma Chan
Grade: A

I want a GIF of Florence Pugh wrapping the Saran Wrap around her face when she tries to suffocate herself out of nowhere. It would be hilarious for social media arguments.

Summary

The story takes place in the company town of Victory, California. Everything about Victory seems like it’s straight out of the 1950s and 1960s. This means the cars, the look of the town, the buildings, the music on the radio (and throughout the movie), and the husbands and wives themselves all live and dress like they are from this era and personalize this aesthetic for whatever reason.

To open the film, we see a house party hosted by Alice (Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Styles). At this small party, we see the couples who are neighbors and friends with them such as Bunny (Wilde) and Dean (Kroll), and Peter (Asif Ali) and Peg (Kate Berlant). They all drink and have an awesome time, with Dean showing everyone how he finally got the coveted gold ring from the town’s leader and head executive at the company they work for in Frank (Pine). The next morning, Alice and Jack have breakfast and Jack heads to work, deflecting Alice’s playful questions about what he does at his job. Now despite his job being a bit of a mystery, the two are very much in love. We can see that right from the beginning. As Jack leaves, we see the odd regiment everyone seems to follow. All of the men in the neighborhood leave at the exact time because they work at the exact same place. Their women all see them leave from the driveway at the same time as well. At home, Alice listens to the radio that is purely focused on the town of Victory. It monitors everything and says aloud that the security level is at “yellow”, everyone is “safe and accounted for”, and all of the employees are headed to Victory Headquarters as they should be. She cleans the house and heads over to ballet class. Once we notice the picture of Frank on the wall, the rigid Shelley (Gemma Chan) comes in to teach the class and everyone shuts up in a hurry. She says the Victory Project has hired new employee Bill Johnson (Douglas Smith), so his wife Violet (Sydney Chandler) was invited to the class to join them.

Following this, we see Alice outside of the house telling Bunny how Margaret (KiKi Layne) wasn’t at the class, with Bunny mentioning how she saw Dr. Collins (Timothy Simons) at their house again. Later, Alice is bringing the clothes in from the clothesline and sees Margaret in her yard by herself. She’s standing with her eyes closed, clutching something. Alice gets a weird vision of a man for a second but shakes it off. Afterwards, she makes dinner while listening to Frank’s newest inspirational speech on the radio, but she gets distracted for some reason. She starts crushing eggshells in her hands inexplicably. It doesn’t really matter though. Eventually, Jack comes home and she’s happy again and things get hot and heavy in a hurry. The next day by the club pool, Alice, Bunny, and Violet hang out, and Alice notes that her and Jack don’t want any kids. After this, she gets another odd vision once she hums this tune that’s been stuck in her head. This time it’s of synchronized dancers. Sometime after, everyone is at a party at Frank’s house. As the women talk, Jack talks with Dean and Bill, and Dean gets weirdly offended at Bill’s comments about Frank, telling him how he doesn’t know how amazing Frank is. Just then, Shelley gathers everyone at the party for her speech, thanking everyone for coming to celebrate Victory’s newest residents in Bill and Violet. As she starts to praise her husband Frank, Margaret interrupts everyone to ask why they’re here and how they shouldn’t be here until her husband pulls her away. Without missing a beat, Frank goes on with his speech and though he doesn’t talk a lot of specifics, we can see why he’s the leader of this town. He’s a well-spoken and charismatic leader who believes in the goal of Victory.

What is that goal?

“Changing the world”.

Once the speech ends, Alice loses Jack. When she looks for him, she sees Margaret in a room with her husband. Margaret tells Alice they’re keeping her there and that everything is not fine, despite her husband downplaying everything and shutting the blinds. Eventually, Alice finds Jack inside the house, and they can’t help but start having sex right then and there. At one point, Frank walks in the room and observes. Alice and Frank make eye contact without Jack ever noticing, and Frank leaves without a word being said.

Obviously, she’s weirded out by the situation, but she doesn’t stop either.

Following this, Alice, Bunny, and Peg hang and talk about Frank’s party’s guests and more specifically Margaret. Bunny passes her off as a nutjob, but Alice defends her. Bunny notes Margaret hasn’t been the same since she took her child out into the desert resulting in his disappearance. Everyone says the child is dead, but Margaret tells everyone “they” took her child as punishment. Margaret said she saw something out there, but Bunny reminds Alice that the one thing they ask of them as citizens of Victory is to stay in town where it’s safe. Peg then questions what the men’s jobs actually entail because her husband has insinuated that they’re making weapons. Bunny cuts her off and things get awkward. Next, she changes the subject to how they believe in the mission of Victory, with Alice agreeing. That night, Alice gets a creepy nightmare of the synchronized dancers looking like zombies and it wakes her up. The next morning, after she cleans the house more aggressively than usual, she takes the trolley out on the town just to get out of the house and clear her mind. At one point, she’s the only passenger. As they get to the edge of town and the driver plans on looping back, she sees a plane fly by. What’s odd is that for a moment, the appearance of the plane flutters like it’s a hologram. It then crashes into a nearby mountain, so Alice asks the driver to go over there so she can see if whoever’s flying it is okay. He refuses, saying he doesn’t go over there and how they need to stay in town where it’s safe. She flips out over his refusal to help and walks by herself towards it. Eventually, she finds this odd building on top of the mountain and presses her hands on the glass windows from the outside. A red light flashes, and we see the synchronized dancers again, with Frank’s voice talking over the imagery.

Immediately after, Alice wakes up in her bed. She’s shocked to see Jack is making dinner, and he tells her she’s been asleep since he got home a few hours ago. She asks about the plane crash, but he has no idea what she’s talking about. She passes it off as a weird dream and is comforted by Jack’s warmness, but there’s one thing Alice and we the viewer know: That was no dream. After hallucinating the wall coming in and crushing her against her glass windows the next morning, she gets a call from Margaret. She knows Alice saw “it” and suggests “they” are lying. She knows neither her nor Alice are safe if they stay there. Alice cuts her off and hangs up. Even so, we know Margaret’s words resonated with her. Something is off about Victory, and Alice is going to find out.

My Thoughts:

A lot of controversy has surrounded this film and its production. There have been numerous rumors stemming from conflicts between director Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and Chris Pine during the promotion of the film, and original star Shia LaBeouf having an issue with everyone (and exiting the film because of it). Truthfully, we don’t know what’s real or fake. Yes, there’s a good chance these “disputes” were blown out of proportion, but all the discourse regarding Don’t Worry Darling seemed to be about the complications involving the real-life crew rather than the actual movie. You may ask why I bring this up, but it would be hard to talk about the film without mentioning what people will (sadly) remember it for. Going along with this, I watched the movie because of the negative publicity surrounding it. I wanted to see if it was all worth it.

In all honestly, it was. I really enjoyed what Olivia Wilde did with Don’t Worry Darling.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for psychological thrillers, but I loved the twisty narrative, the visual style, and the turns taken within the story. It kept me wanting more and more. The suspense and buildup were phenomenal and though there were some things that could have been cut to get to the meatier parts quicker, the slow burn of this one was a major highlight. It was needed to get used to the setting, the routine we see our characters go through, the everyday happenings of Victory, and to get a good idea of the lives these characters live. We have to establish the roles these people play in this town. By the time we inch closer to the third act and see everything start to crumble, it becomes a heart-pounding showstopper of a movie, and we are hooked. It felt like real danger. It gave us this sense of “anything can happen”, a feeling crucial to the success of a good psychological thriller. The production design was a big part of it. The 50s/60s-styled aesthetic is always a fun one to see brought back. There’s something so cinematic and eye-catching about this very specific time in American history, and I love seeing it being brought back for modern films. It never gets old for me. What’s interesting about how its portrayed however is that though it’s not explicitly said, we know the movie takes place in the present day. I can’t tell you why and maybe it may have been different for other viewers, but I never thought for a second that it took place during that time period. I’m not sure if it’s the modern conversations or the personalities of the characters, but right from the start, we know this takes place in the present day. That’s where the mystery begins because we want to know how the hell this is all possible.

How does this town exist? Why are the people acting like this? This isn’t normal!

Right from the opening, they have our attention. Something about the atmosphere is chilling, eerie even. It’s a really cool way to start things off, as well as to keep us on edge no matter how nice some of the characters act. We know something electric is going to happen.

Florence Pugh is exceptional as loving housewife Alice. She makes this movie as riveting as it is because we can’t help but become entranced by everything she does, making the absolute most out of every scene she’s in. If she’s saying something, her face tells us a different story and if she isn’t saying anything, she still tells us a lot with just a glance or a specific movement. It’s very well done. The movie is hers. She absolutely kills it. If you didn’t know by now, Florence Pugh is going to be one of the biggest leading ladies in Hollywood for years to come and films like this show us why. She’s going to be at the level Jennifer Lawrence was a few years back in no time.

At first, everything seems so proper and perfect. Alice is head over heels in love with Jack. As soon as they wake up in the morning, she’s right there to make him breakfast and send him off to work with a kiss. As soon as he gets home, she has a drink prepared, dinner ready, and another excited kiss for him as soon as he walks through the door. It’s her duty as his wife (their words not mine). Even when she’s by herself doing the laundry, she’s smiling thinking about him, smelling one of his shirts and wishing he was there. It’s not an act. She does love him and will continue to do so, no matter what happens. Alice trusts his every word (and it will cost her). It goes both ways too. Jack is always happy to see her and despite how much he works, the love is mutual. They’re in a forever honeymoon phase that’s almost too perfect. Alice’s love for Jack has her do anything to make sure he’s happy. Even when problems are remotely tested between them, it’s hard for her to fight the status quo. She doesn’t want what they have to end. Even when Jack doesn’t believe her about Margaret and what Alice knows she saw, she backs off when she sees it’s bothering him. She can’t stand to argue with the man she loves, even though he doesn’t believe her when she needs him to the most. Her heartbreak is noticeable because their love has never been challenged before, but she tries hard in giving him every chance to fix the situation.

She also embodies the idealistic, commonplace 50s housewife. She’s wearing a dress no matter what, and it’s clear her job is to stay at home, clean the house, cook, and make sure everything is in order, so her husband can come home from work without any other worries. It’s not just Alice either. All the wives have to do this. They all have the same responsibilities and have to be flawless in their execution of daily tasks. In their unofficially required ballet class, the message seemingly hammered home is “there is beauty in control, there is grace in symmetry”. The women have to reach this standard of perfection for their husbands. The structure of it all, and seeing this routine practiced virtually every day, is so strange. Yet, there are never complaints. To Alice, and to all the women that don’t know any better, this is a perfect world for them. They don’t have a stress or care in the world. Hell, they don’t even have to drive. None of them know what their husbands do for work, and they rarely wonder what their husbands even do. They just gossip about trivial things and joke around. When someone dares challenge this status quo, it’s shut down emphatically by another character. We see it happen when Peg ponders the rarely-asked question and right away, Bunny stops Peg in her tracks. You can tell it had Alice thinking for a second, but she quickly agrees with Bunny because the last thing she wants is to become an outsider of the community. She’s too normal for the situation though. You can tell things are starting to affect her. She starts to question things more. Even before she starts to “lose it”, she would still defend Margaret to others when no one else would. Alice is different, but it’s like she doesn’t want to admit it and tries to fight her natural urges to avoid looking crazy because she knows how someone like Bunny would react.

One of the most memorable moments of the film comes when she has a vision of Margaret bashing her head off the mirror in the ballet studio and she screams aloud. Alice turns to realize it didn’t happen, but you can see she’s even more freaked out that she did this publicly. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the citizens of Victory start looking at her different, and she knows it. Then, the inevitable cracks begin to seep through like her seeing these bizarre but striking images.

I’ll admit one thing about the narrative. I can’t say we saw anything we haven’t seen before regarding the “this world isn’t what you think it is” trope. It’s been done a million times over. Why is it still so enthralling in Don’t Worry Darling? To me, it starts with Pugh. Seeing Alice go through her seemingly perfect life and see it all fall apart, realizing everything she ever appreciated or loved is a lie hurts us. We want her to win so badly because of her surroundings. We know she didn’t deserve the situation she ends up in. She got screwed because she put so much faith into her partner, and it’s heartbreaking.

The argument where she admits her old life was rough but emphasizes the point of it being her life was such an impactful scene on so many levels. Honestly, you’d be hard pressed to find a film this captivating in the year of 2022.

We really attach ourselves to Alice, especially after seeing how truly evil the men of this town are and how they work extra hard at suppressing any and all things that challenge their “mission”. The townsfolk just continuously gas light her at every turn to keep things the way they are. It’s frustrating as hell because we know she’s right, but she starts to believe them at some points because she’s fighting this battle alone. When we join her in finding out the truth and uncover what’s going on, there’s no way you aren’t glued to the screen, hoping and praying for her to find a way out to save herself. This is the protagonist this film needed, and Pugh is a certified star of this new generation of Hollywood. Harry Styles was a nice match for her as well. In his first starring role, he did a wonderful job. Though I could see Shia LaBeouf, the original one set to co-star with Pugh, doing a better job in certain emotional parts, Styles was a good choice in the romantic aspects. Sure, his whole persona as a musician is this, but it doesn’t always translate to acting. Here, it really does. They play a young couple in love very well. If cast in the right parts, Harry Styles can become a major movie star if he wants to. His charismatic presence noticeably translates onscreen in all the right ways. He’s got natural charm, perfect hair (this cannot be stressed enough), good looks, and a surprising ability as an emotional actor. I still get goosebumps thinking about the car scene when he’s forced to let Alice go. He has the star quality needed to continue being a leading man in major Hollywood productions.

Honestly, Harry Styles could be the next musician to turn into an acting superstar in the vein of people like Lady Gaga, Cher, or Frank Sinatra. I’m not saying his role is Oscar-worthy or comparable to the musicians I just mentioned (chill out), but you can’t deny how well he did for his first starring role in a film with such an intricate story like this. The twists involving him were completely mind-blowing and unexpected. You’ll be shocked as to what he turns into, as Styles really commits to both sides of the character.

I applaud Olivia Wilde for deciding to move herself away from the starring role and inserting Florence Pugh there because she felt a younger couple would fit the material better but isn’t it odd that she was basically directing her future boyfriend eat out another woman on camera. I get that they’re all professionals and it’s not actually happening, but this is a pretty intimate film, especially between our leads. Does anyone else find this super weird, or is it just me?

Chris Pine was a very good villain too. Again, he didn’t reinvent the wheel regarding his performance. It was basically the usual, unadmitted cult leader role we’ve seen before, but he did his homework. He did a great job. Frank isn’t the outright, evil-on-paper villain. He’s good looking, always knows what to say and never stumbles over his words, speaks in a slower but clear manner, and commands attention anytime he enters a room. Frank has to do this too. He started a movement and is the main selling point behind it. Pine has to make us believe that these people listen and hang onto his every word because they believe in his teachings. When he asks things like “Who’s world is it?”, the whole community chants “Ours!” with enthusiasm because they buy what he’s selling. They believe in the Victory Project and how it will change the world, and it’s because of Frank’s earnestness and Pine’s believability in the role. To an outsider’s perspective however (like us as the viewer), we know something is off about him and it’s another reason to like Alice too. Frank can talk for half hour intervals and not say anything. He means what he says, but you can’t boil down his message to anything specific. This is when you know something is wrong. You can tell he’s not what he seems and as he talks more and glances at certain people with telling expressions, the creepiness starts to come out ever so slowly.

Alice reacts to his speeches normally at first but when things start to be uncovered (and especially after she saw him walk in on her and Jack having sex and almost giving his approval of it), she starts to react with a slighted glance. She starts to see something is wrong with him, and he takes notice because she’s the only one who challenges his spot at the top just because of it. He admitted she was on to something (“I’m sorry Bunny didn’t believe you”) and dared her to call him out publicly right before the dinner scene too, showing how good of a manipulator he actually is. He’s a master at mind games, and his unofficial encouragement to her to bring it up at the dinner table shows how tough it’ll be to stop him. She was close to changing everyone’s minds by pointing out the coincidences of their backstories, but Frank’s cunning is next level. He’s able to curtail the whole thing so nonchalantly, she loses her temper, and it screws everything up. The icing on the cake was when he tells her calmly, “I expected better from you” once everyone left. What a gut punch.

We haven’t had these combined feelings of anxiousness and excitement in a film in quite some time. Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling brings the heat. Captained by a fantastic Florence Pugh and a surprisingly good Harry Styles, this psychological thriller will keep your eyes widened at every turn. You know something is wrong despite the perfectness of this town, and you quickly become locked in when trying to find out why. With a quirky score switching from old pop tunes to humming (mixed with silence and sounds of nature to give off a spine-chilling feel), a top tier visual style and production design, and genuine emotion, this is a world you want to learn every aspect of. By the time you’re halfway through, you start to pay attention to every physical cue from the actors because you’re afraid of missing something important. That is the sign of a great film. I know people want to hate on it so bad, but it was a fascinating thing to watch unfold even if it isn’t the most original of stories.

In terms of mainstream movies of 2022, Don’t Worry Darling has to be one of the most underrated.

Fun Fact: As I said before, Shia LaBeouf was initially cast in the role of Jack but dropped out. Olivia Wilde was originally going to play Alice and Florence Pugh was to play Bunny, but Wilde made the decision to switch it. Dakota Johnson was also supposed to play Margaret until she had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with her movie The Lost Daughter.