Don’t Worry Darling movie review

Lydia Winstead, Staff Writer

Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling seemed to be set up for success, beautiful costumes, sets, and actors, plenty of drama from the cast to get the internet talking, and c’mon, Harry Styles. After watching the trailer it really seemed like something worth watching, but unless you’ve got a special desire to watch it, maybe stick with the trailer.

While the easiest way to describe it would be to start with the spoilers at the end, it opens something like this: Alice, (Florence Pugh) is a housewife living with her husband Jack, (Harry Styles) in the idealized, 1950s, suburban company town of Victory. Every day, the husbands in town go to work at the Victory Project’s headquarters; their mission: “the development of progressive materials,” while their wives cook, clean and do anything but ask their husbands what they’re truly working on. Just imagine the scene from A Wrinkle in Time where every house, person, and bouncing ball looks the same, just with a few…adult scenes. Everything goes as wrong as it does in A Wrinkle in Time though. Alice starts to suspect that something is wrong in the seeming perfection of the town, and by the time she figures this out, it may be too late.

The movie isn’t terrible. It’s good for about the first hour, or when what you think is going to happen culminates with the minimum amount of tension to make you hold your breath for a second or two, and then it honestly gets boring. The last 15 minutes leaves you feeling confused about how you feel. It ends with a big reveal, that if set up better could really make it solid. Google describes it as a horror/thriller, so if you’re hesitant to see it because of that, I wouldn’t worry. While there is one scene that could be considered somewhat scary, the other scenes and editing that attempt to fulfill the thriller category come off as annoying rather than creepy after an hour or so.

But, bad stuff aside, I would still recommend seeing it. If you’re a sucker for aesthetics, pretty costumes, and a good mystery, go check it out. Florence Pugh does not disappoint and I was actually surprised by how much I liked Olivia Wilde’s performance (playing Alice’s friend, Bunny) who starred in the movie along with directing it. Harry Styles’ acting isn’t bad and I would say he actually carries the comic relief.

But I think the movie can really be summed up in Harry Styles’ description of it, “my favorite thing about the movie, is like, it feels like a movie.”