There’s been a lot of talk about what has gone on behind the scenes of Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, her follow up to 2019’s Booksmart. From Wilde getting together with her lead actor, Harry Styles, while filming to feuding with her lead actress, Florence Pugh and whether or not Styles spit on Chris Pine during the Venice Film Festival. Yeah, it’s all fun gossip but really, the only thing that matters is if the movie is good or not.
Yeah, it’s fine.
Set in the 1950’s, Pugh stars as Alice, a housewife living with her husband, Jack (Styles), in an idyllic community that seems too good to be true. The neighbors (Nick Kroll, Sydney Chandler and Wilde) are their best friends and the husbands have fabulous jobs thanks to a mysterious guy named Frank (Pine). Everything is going swimmingly, until they aren’t.
Alice begins to notice little things that don’t match up. What kind of work does Jack really do? What’s up with Frank? And when she watches something happen to former friend and neighbor, Margaret (KiKi Layne), she starts to piece together secret after secret.
It would be a disservice to say anything more, but it begins to get very Twilight Zone-ish.
Wilde knows how to mount up the tension, which really notched up the stakes for the finale. But, running at 2 hours, it did feel a little long. We pretty much know there are shenanigans going on early into the film but getting to where we actually find out what the deal is… some scenes feel like they could have been cut or shortened.
Pugh is, as usual, great. She’s the rock here, grounding the whole film in reality. Styles is fine as well but I would think his role will confuse his young fans who see it without knowing anything about the film. It was really nice to see Pine as the heavy. He’s got this creepy, vacant look where you really have no idea what is going on in his head.
