Don't Worry Darling

Don't Worry Darling

Alice and Jack are lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning exactly what they’re doing in Victory, and why.

  • Released: 2022-09-22
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thrillers
  • Stars: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, KiKi Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Douglas Smith, Kate Berlant, Ari'el Stachel, Asif Ali, Timothy Simons, Sydney Chandler, Alisha Heng, Wylie Quinn Anderson, Mariah Justice, Michelle Ells, Marcello Julian Reyes, Daniel Nishio, Venice Wong, Dita Von Teese, Monroe Cline, Kurt Scholler, Anna Tenney, Ali Starr Goebel, Natasha Luna, Trevor Hooper, Samantha Sookdeosingh, Ebru, Kaleigh Krause, Kate Ellie Fitzgerald, Mario White, Anthony Soto, Nataly Santiago, Natasha Kalimada, Charissa Kroeger, Alexandra Nicole Hulme, Brooke deRosa, Hal Rosenfeld, Connor Ryan
  • Director: Olivia Wilde
 Comments
  • FleursDeLectrice - 3 June 2024
    "From Doubt to Delight: 'Don't Worry Darling' Surprises Skeptics with Mix of Drama, Tech, and Styles!"
    Initially skeptical due to reviews, 'Don't Worry Darling' pleasantly surprised me. Olivia Wilde's directorial finesse, completed by Florence Pugh's compelling performance managed to immerse me in this richly layered narrative. While Harry Styles' foray into acting raised eyebrows, I thought his performances wasn't that bad. 'Don't Worry Darling' deftly weaves together traditional gender expectations with cutting-edge technology, offering a nuanced commentary on societal shifts. When it was all done and over I pondered over the intricate interplay between past norms and the ever-evolving landscape of modernity."
  • hmsqyqbs - 1 May 2024
    You should worry, darling
    It's so so so so so bad. Don't watch it to see if Harry Styles is a good actor, or at minimum interesting. He isn't and is poorly cast (it looks like he is the teenage child when surrounded by his "peers"). Olivia Wilde trying to be artsy and give us David Lynch but it's all smoke and mirrors. Florence Pugh does her best to carry this mess. Unnecessary sex scenes that add nothing to the story. When Jack is apologizing in the car it's like a skit from SNL. Frank sucks. Harry Styles sucks. I hope FP got paid a lot this, and I don't think celebrities deserve pay-checks at all. That's how bad this is. So what is Victory? The plane crash? Why have the dessert simulation? When you root for someone to kill themself - it's a bad movie.

    Don't know it never tells you. The end.
  • jasminn_tan - 3 March 2024
    Nothing is as it seems
    I went in watching this with no prior knowledge about the plot so I was confused for the first 30 minutes before I realised that 'Oh, this is a thriller of some kind'. Florence Pugh is obviously the strongest actor in this movie, as be protagonist. When the conspiracy was revealed towards the end of the movie, I was surprised and saddened for several reasons. Even after everything Jack had done to Alice in the name of love, Alice still loved him. But in the end, she chose to leave him behind. And to think that most of the women in that town had their lives taken away from them without their knowledge, their autonomy completely stripped, because their husbands were greedy and selfish. They wanted the perfect life, their wives waiting upon them day and night. And with Victory, their wishes were fulfilled.

    The ending was left up to the viewer to interpret but I think that it was leading us to believe the women would eventually band together and leave the made up world eventually, with or without their husbands. They would take their power back.
  • kimshots - 9 January 2023
    Is a life of comfort worth losing some freedoms?
    The beautiful people of victory live in spacious homes, dress in elegant clothes, eat spectacular meals and have a lot of parties. The ladies take ballet, the men have very long Elvis style cars. There appears to be no trash, no crime, no disease, no poverty. Nonetheless, the ladies are not happy. Why? The sexy and mysterious Frank, who runs the place, is at the head of the local business but what does it make? Really? Who cares. Your husband goes to work, makes good money at a secure job, you live in a stylish and comfortable and spacious house in a safe neighborhood. Just imagine the real plights of many of the real people watching the film: job insecurity, the gig economy, for most women, the second shift of housework after the day spent on their feet at some badly paid service jobs. Sure, it seems the men have a proclivity for hooking up with their wives by engineering a dropped train ticket, or is this a manufactured memory? The reality is this is the life of the rich, yes there are social rules to follow. Yes, you must follow those professional and personal rules to stay in this world. But let's be honest: for a lot of women who got jobs after the Feminist revolution, the end result is an impossible life, trying to meet the demands of small children and other family obligations while now required to engage in paid employment too. The resultant health and social problems do not add to the argument the film is trying to make. To answer my question we ALL give up some freedoms to live in a community. Nobody is free; nobody lives alone in a state of pure nature. I think for the vast majority of those struggling to make ends meet getting a job in a place like victory would be like winning the lottery. In fact, we put walls around our gated communities to keep you out, right, not to keep us in. I rest my point.
  • sara_modric-49125 - 3 January 2023
    It was like I was watching Westworld
    This Victory world movie it's just as same as the Westworld series. If you had watched it you'll get it. It is the same other imaginary and also real world as we can see in the Westworld. Only difference is that in the Westworld we have real people and robots, but here we have only "real people" in the imaginary world. Also, you can get killed in Westworld (later when the story hooks up) just as same as here. I found it very interesting despite that I figured the plot really soon. If you like movies that shows you some kind of "maybe" future, you should watch it. It is really interesting but only for those who like stories in some kind of SF version.
  • csm-78119 - 30 December 2022
    A waste of Florence Pugh
    This is ultimately a silly film that wastes the talent of its lead actress Florence Pugh. She puts in a convincing and at times compelling performance in the midst of a wholly ridiculous plot. There's a decent soundtrack and it's stylishly shot with a 1950's feel to it but none of this makes up for a storyline that is derivative, unpleasant and absurd. At the end of the film I was left thinking that that was a daft film with a fairly nasty feel to it and also that I had lost two hours of my life that I was never getting back. If you want to feel uncomfortable for a few hours and to leave the cinema mildly annoyed at such a pessimistic view of the human condition then this is the film for you!
  • meezerfan123 - 26 December 2022
    Enjoyable but you could drive a classic car through the plot holes
    I enjoyed this movie but I do think the script could have been better. I mean, what's not to like about amazing MCM decor, gorgeous clothes, and gorgeous people? It's hard to see Victory as a horrific place for a woman; these women may do their own housecleaning and cooking but they also seem to have glamorous parties to attend every night (who IS watching all the children?), handsome husbands who adore them and, in the case of the main character, mind-blowing newlywed type sex.

    At a certain point, Alice (Florence Pugh) starts to see things that are not quite right and she tries to figure out what's really happening. The problem is, the plot is so lame and unbelievable.

    If a doctor disappeared from her entire life, I do believe they would look in her apartment as part of the investigation. Come on. Did nobody bring that up in a story meeting? Also, is Jack the only relationship she has - no family, friends, etc.?

    I still liked it, it was entertaining and that's what entertainment is supposed to be. I just kind of thought the feminist message was lost because, really, Alice's life was pretty terrible before - 30 hour days but you live in a hovel? Why? If you can't give up the loser boyfriend, at least take your doctor money and get a decent place for the two of you to live. If she'd had an amazing, successful life and he wasn't her boyfriend but a stalker who had snatched her from it in order to own and control her completely in an alternate reality, that would have made more of the point that I think Olivia Wilde was trying to make.
  • arleu - 20 December 2022
    May have left more questions than answers, but still a must watch in my book.
    I was eager to watch this film and fortunately, it met my expectations. Florence Pugh gave no less of an exceptional performance. Although I may be biased because I am a fan of hers, she hardly EVER disappoints. Props to Wilde's directing and writing, she gave a great performance as well. What I wanted to touch upon was Harry Styles' acting. I was skeptical of his performance because of factors such as his relationship with Wilde and his being a well-known face in the music industry, there was a possibility that his role could've been for publicity. As a Styles fan myself, I held him to high standards because I was hoping the latter wouldn't be true. And it wasn't! Styles' did not disappoint with his performance as Jack Chambers. Reflecting on that, I should've been less worried because he's been used to cameras, and after all, this film wasn't his acting debut either, and I wasn't expecting an Oscar-worthy performance right off the bat.

    The unsettling feel during the screening is easily argued as purposeful. From the trailers and teasers and such, the audience comes into the film with the expectation of chaos to ensue. Towards the beginning of the movie, shots are filmed with high-key lighting and vibrancy, supporting the 1950s domestic, blissful setting. The slow progression from utopia to dystopia supports the unease that is meant to wash over the audience. Especially with the contrast of low-key lighting during the scenes outside of the Victory Project and the scenes inside when the atmosphere was getting too much, such as when Style's character Jack performs a tap dance that goes on for roughly 15 minutes while cutting to Bunny and Alice's heated conversation through the use of parallel editing.

    The visions that Pugh's character, Alice, experiences are reminiscent of the 1924 experimental film, "Ballet Mécanique" by Fernand Léger. This is because of the way Alice's visions were constructed. Except in "Don't Worry Darling," color and sound are prominently used compared to the black and white silent film. Explainably adding more apprehensiveness for the audience and Alice herself for what's to come.

    I admire Affonso Goncalves' work as an editor. As the publisher, Mike Manalo, claimed in his article on The Nerds of Color, "you need a strong editor to bring to life the nightmarish fever dream poor Florence Pugh must fight through. That's where Affonso Goncalves comes in!" And I reckon that Goncalves and Wilde got the job done; giving just enough information to the audience but not too much to spoil the ending early on, creates satisfaction while watching.

    Classical Hollywood Narrative is described as followed:

    "Hollywood plots consist of clear chains of cause and effect, and most of these involve character psychology as opposed to social or natural forces. Each character is given a set of comprehensible, consistent traits. The Hollywood protagonist is typically goal-oriented, trying to achieve success in work, sports, or some other activity. This conflicts with the desires of other characters, creating a struggle that is resolved only at the end of the story. Hollywood films usually intensify interests by presenting not only one but two interdependent plot lines. Almost inevitably one of these involves heterosexual romance, which gets woven in with the protagonist's quest to achieve a goal. The plot will arouse suspense through deadlines, escalating conflicts, and last-minute rescues."

    Wilde's film meets this criterion to an extent, and the production crew did a great job with their High Concept Film following the hook, look, and book. However, Wilde includes other elements such as the experimental style and the main romantic duo not getting a happy ending to the table. The satisfying feeling of having a movie wrapped up and tied into a neat bow is not something that one who watches the film will receive. Although it's satisfying that Alice escapes the Victory Project, many things are left undone. Due to Jack's presumed death and Alice's current state at the end of the movie, the story is left wide open for a sequel in the future.

    Overall, I believe that certain concepts could have been executed better? Yes, they almost always can be. But I leave my review honest and informable instead of critical. Styles was an acceptable fit for the role of Jack Chambers, and I'm aware that other actors may have been able to do better, but others have had much more experience. Plenty of people may not have a myriad of acting or directing credits under their belt, but this proves that this exceptional job done by each individual will lead to greater for each of them. I enjoyed the movie greatly because of Styles and am satisfied with his performance, same with the entirety of the cast (props to Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll, Gemma Chan, Chris Pines, and the rest!).
  • hatimthepain - 14 December 2022
    Not for lower IQ People
    It's tough to write a review for this movie without spoiling it. Great twist in the third act that I did not see coming. Acting was spot on. Florence is so captivating and I loved watching her. Harry did a great job as usual. Chris, Olivia, all pros and it shows. I really want to see it again now that I know what's going on. I love those kinds of movies where you think you know what's going on and it does a complete 180. Do yourself a favor and just stop reading the reviews. Seriously, put your phone down and go see it because the less you know the better. Beware of the giggling teens (just sayin).
  • mekjd - 9 December 2022
    Incoherent, Darling
    It is as if Olivia Wilde wanted to concoct a dish out of stereotype leftovers, Hard to know whose ingredients she would borrow next. Stepford Wives, Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock, and many, many more.

    Borrowing by itself is no crime. It can be a tribute.

    But none of this hangs together.

    Would not bother with this. The Busby Berkeley dance scenes are masterful. Yet mocking.

    The fashions, lovely.

    The sets, amazing in their just-too-perfect colors, with antique cars.

    I was left with the conviction that Wilde had money to burn on this production, and burn it she did. Bring in everything, leave out nothing (spies! Tranquilizers! Shock therapy!), yet go nowhere.

    Wilde would do well to take cues from her literary ancestor, Oscar Wilde. He was over the top, but mindful that Less Is More, Darling.