Don't Worry Darling

There is no way to discuss this movie without spoilers, so, let this be your warning. They will abound, and they won’t be partitioned, because that’s not possible. We’re gonna talk about this movie’s faults first, and to start off, the smaller stuff: outside of Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde, the acting in this is wonky. I’ll admit a bias against Chris Pine; I think he reeks of smug asshole, so I can’t get past that in anything he does. But the rest of the cast is either way too under-stated, way too campy, or in the case of Harry Styles, oh please god make it stop I’m begging you. He needs to go back to music, because I’ve now seen him in three movies, and at his best, he’s forgettable. At his worst, he’s a Razzie winner. And him and Pugh have ZERO chemistry when they’re exchanging dialogue. The music is also an afterthought, so much so, I’m already moving on to the next topic. Now, we come to the movie’s biggest problem, and it affects the pacing, direction, script, and attempt at messaging, and that is this movie’s total lack of identity. In summary, this is The Village meets Ready Player One (or, if you watch RiffTrax or like terrible movies, Julie & Jack). The only thing the movie tried to hide is the last act twist; other than that, you’ll know within ten minutes the town of Victory and the 50’s-but-not-quite trappings are a facade. Don’t Worry comes from the same school of thought as Get Out: show the evil early so you can focus on the build to the why. But the flaw in that is that puts the viewer ahead of the character; we now have to sit and watch the movie go idle while it gets all the puzzle pieces in place for the main character to be where we are. It’s shitty storytelling, plain and simple. And because they’re doing it with a tired trope of “town is not what it seems”, not only are you waiting for the movie to get on with it, you’re waiting for it to get on with something YOU ALREADY KNOW IS COMING. Does it matter if the town is walled off, or on the moon, or in the jungle of Peru? No! In this case, it’s even dumber, because the twist is IT’S A MISOGYNIST CULT IN VIRTUAL REALITY. Seriously, everything you’ve been watching is a simulation where women are kept in forever, and men have to leave to pay for the privilege of living out a Boomer’s post-war Americana digital fantasy. At least The Village was tangible. This is half a step removed from “it was all a dream”. Thanks for jerking me around, movie. Your basic plot is a cliffnotes version of other stories, with the only original idea being a sudden turn into the Lawnmower Man at the end. WHY MOVIE. WHY. Compounding that is that the movie is clearly trying to make a commentary on something … but I’m not sure what, and I’m not sure the movie knows what either. Is it a satirical jab at suburban life? Or that our modern world needs to slow down and get back to basics? Is it about toxic masculinity and gender roles? The perils of technology? I don’t know, because the movie doesn’t either. It just throws out images and themes and does nothing with them, doesn’t even draw attention to them. And before someone says “you’re looking too deep”, the movie WANTS you to look deep. This is clearly an allegorical tale, but it has no idea what the allegory is. It’s just … happening. And then, to top it all off, when it veers hard left into the exposing the simulated nature of the world, it establishes only one rule: if you die in the simulation, you die for real. Can people teleport if this is all a computer program? Or hurl fireballs? Or jump 100 feet in the air? Why does anybody need a car? And why would anyone build a simulation where your digital death will kill you in real life? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!? So, the end result is movie built on other movies’ spare parts, stapling concepts together without making them integrate, expecting profundity to ooze out of the movie by sheer will power, and raising more questions than it answers with a poorly defined twist (I didn’t even mention how the inciting incident — a plane crash — is never explained). And yet … it’s bizarrely entertaining. I was never bored. Pugh does a marvelous job with what she’s given, and Wilde is good as well. The set and decor is astounding, the cinematography amazing. and when the direction isn’t trying to hammer home an imaginary thematic nail, it’s quite nice. I liked looking at this movie. If I didn’t ask any questions, it was a passable way to spend 2 hours (although that could’ve been cut down just a tad). Despite spending an inordinate amount of time going over the negatives of this movie, I enjoyed it more than I didn’t. I’m just frustrated because I can see how this could be better, and it feels like the effort was only put in to make this the bare minimum of what it could be. So, go in with lowered expectations, and you might be okay.