Alright, after a short break (that ended up longer than intended, oops) following the Month of Spooks, I am back, ready to write about non-spooky stuff again. So let’s go!
Ladies, gents, and non-binaries… “Don’t Worry Darling”.
Living in a seemingly utopian 1950s suburbia, Alice (Florence Pugh) seems to lead a wonderful life with her husband (Harry Styles). But this bliss is soon tested when Alice discovers that this seemingly perfect suburbia may hold some dark secrets. On paper, I love pretty much everything about the narrative, there are so many cool ideas for an effective psychological thriller here. In terms of execution though, I find it a bit lacking. Not outright bad, and never boring, but I never got that “Oh yeah, I’m really into this movie” click. Something about the way the story unfurls, the way that the narrative expands just doesn’t entirely come together for me. It’s undercooked and a bit messy that way, but I also can’t say that I disliked it. It’s… eh.
The characters in this are a mixed bag. One or two I find pretty compelling, like there’s something interesting about them. The rest of them on the other hand show shades of being intriguing, but their arcs don’t really go far enough to be truly compelling. I’ll say, our lead character Alice is pretty compelling, it’s interesting to see how she reacts to the various events and revelations of the story, she’s a fairly dynamic and interesting character. And Florence Pugh is absolutely fantastic in the role, as she always is. Harry Styles plays her husband, and he’s… fine. He’s not terrible, but he’s not great either… just fine. Then we also have people like Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, KiKi Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Kate Berlant, and more rounding out the cast, and they all deliver really solid performances. It’s generally speaking a really good cast.
The score for the movie was composed by John Powell, and I thought it was great. It’s this strange mix of more typical thriller droning and some basic orchestrations with colorful and really eerie vocalizations, with some interesting piano and percussion. It’s one of the more unique scores I’ve heard in a while, and I kinda loved it. There’s also a lot of licensed songs from the 50s that are used throughout, and they work pretty well in setting a mood in their respective scenes. So yeah, this movie has some great music.
“Don’t Worry Darling” was directed by Olivia Wilde, and I think she did a pretty solid job with it. She has a good grip of how to try to build tension in a scene, she shows how to have a good flow to her scenes. Her talent behind the camera does help elevate some of the less than stellar writing a bit. And when you combine her directing with Matthew Libatique’s frankly stunning cinematography, you get a movie that, on a technical level, is quite stunning.
This movie’s gotten some mixed reception. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 38% positive rating. On Metacritic it has a score of 48/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 6.2/10.
While it isn’t as emotionally engaging as it could’ve been, I’d still say that “Don’t Worry Darling” is fine. It has a meh story, okay characters, great performances, great music, and great directing/cinematography. Time for my final score. *Ahem*. My final score for “Don’t Worry Darling” is a 6.57/10. So I’d say it’s still worth renting.
My review of “Don’t Worry Darling” is now completed.
I didn’t worry… so now what do I do or do not do?
TheMarckoguy 
I hadn’t heard of this. But as I am not a fan of Harry Styles, it is unlikely I will ever watch it.
Best wishes, Pete.
I never sought out this movie because it looked really boring to me. I did enjoy your review, though…but I think I’ll still give it a pass.