#MovieReview: Don’t Worry Darling is bereft of originality

Don’t Worry Darling is a frequently stylish, but ultimately jumbled movie with a contrived and unnecessary third act.

The much anticipated second effort from director Olivia Wilde has been preceded by a pop-cultural media circus that included high profile firings, tales from the set and the infamous ‘spitgate’.

Said incidents have received acres of coverage on social media too, with split second video clips at film festivals receiving slow motion, play-by-play breakdowns.

It is likely that this engagement is the most that Don’t Worry Darling will ever get, because the actual film is largely reductive and contains little more than surface level ideas.

But Florence Pugh, who you may know from Midsommar, Little Women or Black Widow, is again luminous in the lead role and solidifies her place among the best actors of her generation.

She completely outshines pop-star turned actor, Harry Styles, who is serviceable as the second lead, but simply cannot keep up with her dynamism and pure watchability.

It should also be said that this movie is beautifully designed and the production team bring the period setting perfectly to fruition.

Mild spoilers to follow
Don’t Worry Darling follows the story of a group of families that live in cookie-cutter 1950s bliss in the fictional town of Victory, California.

The town serves a shady corporation of the same name which employs the men, while the women keep house and look after the children.

Everyone is happy in their idyllic, pastel toned lives, where gender roles are clearly defined and the women do not need to fret about anything other than cooking and drinking cocktails in the afternoon.

But, of course, Pugh begins to feel discontent and – gasp! – think for herself.

This sets her on a course to find out what is really going on in Victory as the larger story emerges.

It ultimately leads to a supposedly feminist twist in the last half an hour which is completely unearned and falls flat, wasting all of the good work done before it.

That allegory, which underpins the entire movie, also feels rooted in the film’s time period and says little of what fourth wave feminist activists are focused on in 2022.

You are unlikely to see anything new in Don’t Worry Darling, which is really a conglomeration of ideas from The Stepford Wives and some lesser Black Mirror episodes.

Nevertheless, the first hour is often enjoyable and Wilde should have more than enough career cachet built up to get another chance at an original big-budget thriller.

This one however, is largely forgettable.

Rated 16 for scenes containing Sex, Language and Violence.
2.5/5.

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