Don't Worry Darling

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 (10/03/2022)

A shallow, dumb and unspeakably boring variation on The Stepford Wives. The two-hour running time is truly mind-numbing given the emptiness of the whole story. It's also a tacky, fatuous and shallow film, just like the world it's trying to satirize. The high rating on this one is downright shocking to me. (02/10/2024)

An atmospheric relationship drama with interesting performances. Unfortunately, the script is as dodgy as the leading lady's memory. Spending an hour and a half portraying the world and having the interesting, supporting stuff taken away in a moment is the most frustrating part. The motifs of the relationship between men and women in contemporary society are stripped away, killed without proper context. The behaviour of some of the characters is downright baffling. Chris Pine and his departure was supposed to mean what? But Florence Pugh does a great job, and even the bumbling Harry Styles is a sight to behold. Olivia Wilde's brilliant direction saves much of the film, but the crumbling story at the ending trip her up. The visuals are great, though. A more assured script next time and it'll work out. John Powell's score is superb. (01/18/2024)

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% (05/04/2023)

(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! (09/27/2022)