Don't Worry Darling

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. (14/11/2022)

Neither the directorial inventiveness of Olivia Wilde nor the acting brilliance of Florence Pugh can save this one, because apart from the first 30 minutes it's the most arid rip-off of any film you've ever heard in connection with this. Go ahead and plop in any film from the "grapevine" and answer for yourself the question of whether you need to see the ones you've already seen a hundred times again. The retro look, the music, the costumes, and the dolly shots are all fine (the first quarter really provides the biggest highlights, after that it goes downhill hard), but what can you do when the whole thing is horrifyingly sterile and unimaginative. Hopefully Olivia will have better luck choosing the script the third time around, because she's a fine director. [40%] (17/10/2022)

(Spoiler alert!) It’s probaly impossible not to compare Don’t Worry Darling with The Stepford Wives and similar films in which an apparently perfect reality is not what it seems. Since the similarity to The Stepford Wives is very obvious, you get a relatively early idea of what the film is actually about, and expect perhaps to get some more fundamental and shocking twist at the end, which doesn't quite happen. Still, I must commend the good production and costume design evoking the 1950s, as well as the unmistakable and truly oppressive soundtrack. Three and a quarter stars! (27/09/2022)

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% (04/05/2023)

Olivia Wilde and her ambitious psychological thriller evoking The Stepford Wives should have been the gem of the year, but it's just a decent genre flick. The setting in the 1950s is very nice, the utopian experimental community is an attractive subject, Florence Pugh is both sexy and a great actress, and there's a nice final twist with Chris Pine that has something to it, but somehow I was expecting more. When best scene in thriller is Pugh's oral sex on a table doesn't feel enough to me. I found the whole film to be a little too restrained. There is no violence, no proper escalation of the situation. The trailer made me expect downright mind fuck scenes playing with the viewer's mind, shocking and fascinating at the same time and unfortunately Olivia fails to do that. I probably had too high expectations, but it's not a bad film, it's definitely worth seeing, I wasn't bored, there are bright moments and strong performances, and the visuals and atmosphere are also very good. In the cinema it might have enhanced the experience to a stronger rating,at home only for a strong 3 stars. 65%. (09/11/2022)