Strange Darling

This gets a half star because of Willa Fitzgerald's acting, which is far and away more than this movie deserves. This gets another half star because Letterboxd doesn't allow zero star ratings. If it did, it would get the aforementioned half snowflake and nothing else, because this movie was one of the most insufferable and insulting experiences I've had in some time. There is no way to discuss this movie's amazing and comprehensive failures without getting into spoiler territory, so, you've been warned. Here on out, I'm cracking open the egg. So, problem #1 is the movie's non-linear structure. The movie is broken up into six chapters, and they're told wildly out of order. Over the years, I've grown to consider non-linear storytelling a tool used by smug and almost always self-appointed Artists (capital letter necessary) who consider themselves gatekeepers to "real cinema". Pompous twits like Christopher Nolan and Rian Johnson who have their heads shoved up their own asses, convinced they're paving a new road where only real cinephiles need apply because their work is beneath the slack-jawed masses who dare like things like Marvel movies. Their movies are presented as some disruption of the system, cracking a code that mere simpletons can never understand, and to do so, they have to deconstruct film itself, turning it inside out and upside down until it's a needlessly convoluted double helix Mobius strip, and they expect the world to find their complexity and cleverness to be amazing on no basis other than being complex and clever. Strange Darling's writer/director JT Mollner is a Kool-Aid drinker of the highest order, thinking he has outsmarted not only fans but the medium itself, by chopping up his story and telling it out of order because WHOA DUDE ISN'T IT TRANSGRESSIVE? Come here, Mr. Mollner. Let me let you in on a secret. You listening? Okay. A story is worthless if it relies on a gimmick to deliver it. Since we're dealing with non-linear storytelling, let's use Pulp Fiction as an example. Would the movie suffer any from being told in chronological order? No, because there are no narrative twists that the non-linear structure hides. We see Vincent Vega get shot and killed by Butch, but we still go back in time later in the movie's run time and see him alive, having breakfast with Jules. The non-linear structure is employed to section off the movie into mini-arcs. Vincent and Mia's night out and his night of blissful, platonic love. Butch's journey to freedom. Jules' reckoning with himself and his life. It's an artistic choice to present it out of order, but it has no impact on the narrative. Strange Darling, by contrast, clings to this narrative structure as life support because, if it were presented in chronological order, the twist would be ruined too early, and, as it is, unless you've been struck in the head with a baseball bat recently, and at great length, you'll see through the movie's labored attempts at hiding the twist anyway WELL before the movie's big reveal. It is the only way this movie can maintain some sense of drama or tension ... except for the aforementioned obviousness of its twist, which renders the non-linear structure meaningless. All I was left with was a desire for this clumsy movie to get on with its business and stop thinking so highly of itself. Every minute drips with the feeling that this movie thinks it has seen behind a veil that mere mortals have not, and has come back with A Greater Truth about art. It would almost be commendable that the movie is so confident huffing its own paint, if it didn't feel like the kind of buffoon that thinks living in New York for a year means they're more cultured than anybody else. I mean, the movie opens with a title card that says "Shot on 35mm film". It shows the level of smug that went into the making of this movie, that they thought appealing to jaded hipsters by mentioning the filmstock right off the top was some kind of home run, and it speaks to the attitude that went into making the entire movie. Artifice over art, style over substance. Now for problem #2. The movie is about a man and woman who meet for a hook-up, things go south, he ends up pursuing her through the woods. But, twist, she's a serial killer and he was intended to be his next victim, and things went haywire. I'm sure he meant it as some insightful and sly inversion of tropes, the rape/revenge movie like I Spit On Your Grave turned on its side. The woman is the predator! The Final Girl is The Killer! The problem is that the movie settles for inverting the trope. Moreover, it is PROUD of doing this and ONLY this. It does not use this as a way of exploring the origins of the trope. It does not do this to examine the genre itself. It simply presents this lazy, hackneyed turning over of the coin and says "look what I did, it's tails instead of heads now, aren't I smart?'. No. You're lazy, Mr. Mollner. A lazy hack. A lazy, clueless hack. Subversion has to be earned and have purpose behind it beyond just doing it. Otherwise, all you're doing as a filmmaker is being contrarian. The subversion serves no purpose, and in fact, actively detracts from the movie by feeling like a smartest-guy-in-the-room ploy. That leads us to the third and final problem: the movie's messaging. This "subversion" of a trope, flipping the gender on a movie about sex and sexual power dynamics and gender roles, feels like it was intended to be an uplifting message of power for women, but it more comes off like a Babylon Bee imitation of a Jezebel article. The woman is shown to dictate the terms of the sexual experience she and the man (they're never named, by the way, and the credits refer to them as The Lady and The Beast, in the most on-the-nose, I'm-trying-to-fool-you gambit I've ever seen) willingly if reluctantly goes along with it, as she wants to go to some places he's uncomfortable with. Later on, when she's killed the man and the cops are on the way, she pulls down her pants and makes it seem like she's the victim. Of course, the two cops who show up are a woman and a man; the female cop believes her without any questioning, and the male cop, who is older and has more experience, wants to be objective. This ends up biting them in the ass, and the male cop pays for it with his life. Strange Darling seems to think this is just part of the narrative, but still somehow divorced from the "uplifting" sentiment, when it's very much not. This under-cuts any attempt at female empowerment this movie may aspire to (if it does at all, which I'm suspect of). The woman lies to the man about the nature of their sexual encounter, constantly messes with him during it, drugs him, eventually kills him, then lies to the police about it because she knows she'll be able to play on sympathies by being the "weaker sex". The misogyny inherent in this is disgusting. It says "women can be heartless, joyless, amoral monsters that will destroy men and then use their feminine wiles to make it look the other way around". It basically says "don't trust women, they're out to get you". I don't know if that was intentional on Mollner's part or not, but intent doesn't matter. It's there, and it leaves a repulsive and reprehensible stain on the entire movie. There are times when I see a movie that has critical praise and I don't like it, but I can step back and say "it's not for me". But then there are times when I wonder if the world suffered collective brain damage, and this is one of them. I do not understand this movie's overwhelming praise. I am confused and annoyed by it, in fact. Short of the aforementioned performance, I am offended by the very existence of this movie, its undeserved confidence, its insistent arrogance, and its abhorrent gender politics. I don't see how anybody else sees what I don't. But it will be my mission, and my honor, to dissuade people from believing the hype around this piece of trash.