Rent Don't Worry Darling (2022)
3.1 of 5 from 321 ratings
1h 58min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- A 1950s housewife living in the utopian experimental community of Victory begins to worry that her husband's glamorous company may be hiding disturbing secrets.
- Actors:
- Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, KiKi Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Sydney Chandler, Kate Berlant, Asif Ali, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons, Ari Stachel, Steve Berg, Daisy Sudeikis, Marcello Julian Reyes, Monroe Cline, Angel Mammoliti, Nataly Santiago, Daniel Nishio
- Directors:
- Olivia Wilde
- Producers:
- Roy Lee, Katie Silberman, Olivia Wilde, Miri Yoon
- Writers:
- Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke
- Studio:
- Warner
- Genres:
- Drama, Thrillers
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 26/12/2022
- Run Time:
- 123 minutes
- Languages:
- Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English Dolby Atmos, French Parisian Dolby Digital 5.1, German Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Castillian, Danish, Dutch, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French Parisian, German Hard of Hearing, Italian Hard of Hearing, Norwegian, Swedish
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.40:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- The Making of
- 'Don't Worry Darling' Featurette
- Alice's Nightmare
- Deleted Scene
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 26/12/2022
- Run Time:
- 123 minutes
- Languages:
- Canadian French Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English Dolby Atmos, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Canadian French, Danish, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French Parisian, Latin American Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.40:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
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Reviews (9) of Don't Worry Darling
Gripping - Don't Worry Darling review by AER
Forget about all the silly real-life noise on Twitter/Social Media about what went on behind the scenes during the making / release of this film. It detracts from a decent mid-sized mainstream sci-fi film. Wearing its influences on its sleeve you have everything from The Stepford Wives, The Truman Show and Mad Men to compare it to. The twist is borrowed from one of the biggest films there is but I won't spoil it for you.... On its own terms its entertaining, Florence Pugh and the rest of the cast do well in thin-roles and the mechanics of the plot are very interesting and present some food for thought without getting bogged down in infodumps or big explanations. Much has been made of Harry Styles performance but it's not that showy a role and he does well-enough to serve the story, in that he doesn't stand out - which is what has been called for. The look and style of the film is fantastic and the OST is atmospheric too. Elsewhere it's been criticised for being unoriginal - I don't hear those claims angled at the endless superhero/sequel/reboots do you? This was made from an original script - not based on novel, old film, a product.... I can count on one hand the number of films like this released at the cinema in 2022.... Watch it in a vacuum and maybe in a few years after everybody has forgotten about who said what, who spat at whom, who was sacked or walked.... zzzzzzz This should stand alone as the modest and cool little flick it is...
6 out of 7 members found this review helpful.
A messy, preachy, metoo mash-up between Stepford Wives, Westworld & Avatar which starts well but... - Don't Worry Darling review by PV
My advice: rent the 1972 version of The Stepford Wives or read the excellent novella by Ira Levin (who also wrote Hitler clone thriller The Boys from Brazil, Deathtrap, Rosemary';s Baby too). The story back then was new and radical.
Now, it is not new or radical at all - it is cliched, orthodox, conventional manblaming metoo femicinema - which this female director seems to be riding the bandawgon coat tails of.
My test is always asking if the equal and opposite would seem sexist or racist of whatever. WELL if we had a mvoie where a man called his wife a 'stupid stupid woman' then killed her, I suspect the same metoo activists who applaud sexist propaganda like this would scream SEXISM! and MISOGYNY. Yep, so this is MISANDRY then.
It starts relatively well, obviously all fake so one expects a Stepford Wives or Westworld trajectory or character arcs and story. Then we get Avatar-style explanations of what we have seen. By the half way point I was rolling my eyes and by the last act this was like Dr Who on a bad day.
It is not clever or radical or revolutionary. It is not 1989's Thelma and Louise of The Stepford Wives of 1972. It is actually all deeply manhating and is just metoo propaganda to have a go at all men really. I cannot believe most women are so dim and simplistic that this is what they want to watch. They do not judging by the awful losses most metoo movies make, as people stay away from cinemas in their droves - and this was before the lockdowns.
A deeply annoying film. In fact, if there is an Oscar for being annoying and hypocritical and sexist, I think this movie should win all there.
The director also stars in it, which marks this out as a pure vanity piece which was funded to tick the diversity and equality boxes. No wonder cinema receipts are plummeting with this sort of thing on offer.
On the plus side, it looks pretty and there is some decent old music, making the 1950s vibe complete - as if that decade was evil or something (most kids in those days had 2 parents at home and the epidemic of obesity and mental disorders in children was not present ins the apparently awful 1950s...)
2 stars. JUST
4 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
It had potential but in the end very shallow - Don't Worry Darling review by TH
Besides all the publicity this film gained off set, the question was if this film was any good. Sadly for me it wasn't. The plot itself had potential (with its stepford wives/black mirror style) but in the end it missed a chance to really make a point.
The story meanders for the first half and only really picks up later on. The acting is average (still not sure about HS).
If anything it just felt dragged out when maybe a bit more interesting poltting could have helped it. Maybe the script and plotting could have done with some more work.
2 out of 5 for me.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Don't Worry Darling review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
It’s frustrating how close Olivia Wilde’s surreal drama comes to saying something about gender roles amid its nightmarish scenario. Weirdly unsettling with its atmosphere and anxieties, the loss of identity and reality feels as though it comes closer to something that Phillip K. Dick might’ve penned. Sadly, this film is a mess as it crashes and burns, quite literally, by the end, where an explosive car chase is thrown into the mix.
Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh) is a 1950s housewife living in an unsettling community secluded from the world. Somewhere between a full-blown cult and a creepy suburban lifestyle, Alice does little to question her prim and perfect life with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles). She lives among other wives who also fulfill their duties as housewives, with their leader Frank (Chris Pine), calling the shots. However, Alice starts noticing strange things within her community that are forbidden to travel too far outside the suburban area of the desert location. Flashes of a different life transform her world into a nightmare as she desperately searches for answers. What she finds is a dark conspiracy that leads to manipulation and murder.
The whole film feels like a cerebral thriller that continues to unravel, and hopes to find some meaning to it all by the end. While there is a definitive answer as to why Alice has these visions, the greater thematic elements seem to get lost within the atmosphere. Kudos to Wilde for attempting to approach an aesthetic of women feeling trapped in roles and being manipulated in psychological slavery, but so much of that anxiety seems to diminish with the twist that can only be described as The Misoginst Matrix. Perhaps some commentary within this staging relates to online culture and the dangers of simulacrum addiction, but you’d have to go through it with a fine-tooth comb and stretch far to find that aspect.
Existing somewhere between The Stepford Wives and Get Out, there’s perhaps a desperation for this film not to seem so samey as the other creepy under-the-surface cult narratives. In doing so, however, the film becomes more preoccupied with the staging than the greater expansion of its on-the-nose messaging. For example, Alice and Jack are invited to a special party where Frank delights the male audience with a booze-themed stripper that delights the men and makes the women uncomfortable. The implications of this scene are clear, but it’s lingered for so long that the gender dynamic is pretty paint-by-numbers.
This is even more basic when Alice discovers the hardship of her disillusioned neighbor who is not believed and kills herself, where all the men write off accusations of suicide as the rantings and ravings of mad women. We get it. This is not new territory. What few original elements present practically blindside the audience with the chaotic third act that tries much too hard to build up the dangers of the situation and the narrow escape to be had. Perhaps if the film continued after the grand escape, there might’ve been a bigger story beyond The Stepford Wives 2.0.
Don’t Worry Darling feels like it’s on the cusp of saying something but falls back on so many familiar tropes and easy outs that it never unravels much. The observations on 50s-era sexism, creeping fascistic leanings of nostalgia-loving cults, and the darker implications of having identity denied all feel like strolls through an old park. Better films have come about in the past few years that have tapped these elements better and did so without an A-list cast behind them. That’s perhaps the best thing to say about this gender clash retread; it has a bigger cast name, but who knows how long that will remain a draw.