Don't Worry Darling

Olivia Wilde has revealed an intriguing directorial talent with Don't Worry Darling. It's an original psychological thriller that keeps you guessing until the end, leaving you with a sense of revelation — or maybe not. That's up to you. Florence Pugh is fantastic once again, and Harry Styles proved he can act. Quite a few discoveries for just one film, if you ask me. (11/20/2022)

It was a mistake that I didn’t prepare myself in advance. I was expecting something like American Beauty’s emergency exit, and instead, I got Desperate Housewives living out an episode in the Twilight Zone better than life itself. The result is an opulent emptiness, into which Pine’s character pumps more vacuum with every monologue (I don’t care that it’s Jordan Peterson). I understand that it’s meant to reflect the emptiness of this world, but the message of feminism and female autonomy vs. incels, misogyny, and sexism didn’t need to drag on so aimlessly to a conclusion that resolves nothing. What keeps it afloat is Florence Pugh, who reminds me of a young Kate Winslet (at least something reminiscent of Mendes). As for Harry Styles, who looks slightly mongoloid, he didn’t deliver anything. Actually, to be fair, on the dining table, his one direction with his tongue sparked the fantasies of his eager fans. (12/01/2022)

Don’t Worry Darling would have a lot more power as a (shorter, for God's sake) episode of Black Mirror. As it is, it's an overlong and quite easy to see through metaphor, pulled off by the wonderful Florence Pugh. Thanks to her, thanks to Olivia Wilde's direction and thanks to the beautifully kitschy production design, the two hours pass quite briskly, and it doesn't matter so much that the ending doesn't have a great twist. (11/14/2022)

The stolen pile of civilian genre short stories so committed to tricking you that it refuses to answer its own questions. In the first one, there are so many dead ends and vanities that go nowhere that I didn't want to believe until the last second that Olivia Wilde actually wanted to build her entire universe on a single twist. My rating leans mostly on the divine talent of Florence Pugh, who with nothing more than a raised voice or a slight grimace completely wipes the floor with the vainly screaming Harry Styles or the carefree Chris Pine. The direction and the visuals are almost unjustifiably confident, which blurs a few unnecessary lines in the final impression, but the most visible ones (the airplane, the earthquake) cannot be ignored. 50% (05/05/2023)

As a mystery thriller one-shot from The Twilight Zone, totally fine. It's beautiful to look at, great craftsmanship, and I have a soft spot for Florence Pugh, she improves the rating of every film by at least one star. On the other hand, if their ambitions were higher, well we can’t speak of a success. The concept is fine and could have been the basis for a more substantial piece of filmmaking, but it would have needed from sharper edges and a more focused script (actually, it's a terribly perverse outcome, but Wilde and the writers failed to fully capitalize on its power). The handling of the reveal of the twist seems a bit shallow, and if you start digging into the individual scenes, you'll find that they may not even make much sense in the end – I really don’t understand what the plane wreck was doing there. 7/10 (10/04/2022)