STRANGE DARLING MOVIE REVIEW: AN IMPRESSIVELY CRAFTED THRILLER
We meet her as she runs out of the woods, the green behind her, dressed all in red, blonde hair matted, fear written on her face, tears streaking down her cheeks. The image can’t be starker, our fears never more sure – about Little Red Riding Hoods and Big Bad Wolves.
Strange Darling is a film about a serial killer that hopes to surprise you at every twist of its turn, starting from that shot of ‘The Lady’ (Fitzgerald) trying to escape ‘The Demon’ (Gallner). Those are the only identities writer-director Mollner gives its two leads, who are thrown together in dangerous foreplay and then a combat that switches – and switches back – moods, tones and power dynamics so subtly and constantly, that the couple are not the only ones unsettled.
After opening the film with a declaration that it’s about the final few days of a serial killer’s rampage across several American states, between the years 2018 and 2020 – giving it a patina of a true story, when it is not – Mollner goes on to tell the story via “six chapters”, which are not in a linear form.
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However, as the film unfolds, it is unclear why this non-linear structure is more than a stylistic flourish that can often be irritating. Like that foreplay, it keeps us guessing throughout about the motives and identities of the two leads, and what really brought them together on this risky one-night stand.
The director of photography is well-known character actor Giovanni Ribisi, in his first feature behind the camera. And his work here is impressive, right from the intimacy of the two leads flirting and feeling their way around each other in a car bathed in the blue of the hotel’s neon light, to the danger that hangs in the air as they engage in role-play in a room with heavier, denser hues, to when they break free into the almost dazzling light of empty roads or the woody warmth of quaint cottages.
It’s in one such cottage where ‘The Lady’ lands up seeking help that she meets an old couple (Hershey, Begley Jr) enjoying a leisurely, calories-loaded Sunday breakfast and solving a jigsaw puzzle, who too may not be all there. Variously, they describe themselves as “old hippies”, “old bikers”, “doomsdayers”.
Mollner wants us to rethink our assumptions about first appearances, gender stereotypes, bodily strength and violence. Before she checks into the hotel with ‘The Demon’, ‘The Lady’ tells him: “Do you know the kind of risks women like me run every time we go into a room like this?”
It’s an interesting thought. However, while he asks the right questions, Mollner isn’t really interested in getting too deep into them. And somewhere in the “epilogue”, after the six chapters are over, the film stops being smart about its gender politics and is just lazy. There is one too many killing, needless dialogue, and a mention of the devil that does no one any good.
Strange Darling movie director: J T Mollner
Strange Darling movie cast: Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Barbara Hershey, Ed Begley Jr
Strange Darling movie rating: 3.5 stars
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2024-09-06T15:14:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd