Rating: 4/5

*MAJOR SPOILERS*

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN DON’T WORRY DARLING, THIS IS GOING TO SPOIL THE ENTIRE STORYLINE. I RECOMMEND SEEING IT BEFORE YOU READ THIS.

If you’ve just seen Don’t Worry Darling you might be thinking, what the hell did I just watch? You’re not alone. From the hype leading up to the film and the desperation of wanting to figure out what this film is even about, I left the theater bemused, unable to piece together the last two hours of my life. Now, almost every review out there says the same thing, that Florence Pugh does an incredible job as Alice (and she does, no one ever doubted that), and that the story bit off more than it could chew. Which, at first glance is absolutely true because we are left with so many unanswered questions. But watching it a second time gave me so much more insight into the film that I think maybe made some critics too quick to judge.

Had I not watched Don’t Worry Darling a second time, I might have agreed with everything the critics are saying. That it’s slow, repetitive, and fails to unfold in a way that means anything. By the time you find out what is actually going on, it’s over and the credits are rolling. But after watching it the second time, I didn’t get the same feeling of a slow, repetitive build. The build, albeit yes, a bit slow and repetitive, does have a nice, subtle progression. Alice starts out a clean and put together trophy wife. But the more hallucinations and off-putting events she sees, the more unkempt she becomes. The hallucinations in themselves progress to become more and more disturbing. The sense of urgency throughout the film never wanes. Once the shock factor of the big reveal is gone for the second watch through, I was able to actually enjoy the film for what it was, a psychological thriller that wins at keeping the audience on their toes, but fails to be the big, profound, feminist awakening that I think we all wanted it to be.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Now let’s get into the good, the bad, and the ugly. Technically, this film is very well made. The cinematography, costuming, and production design are all incredible and each of those teams deserves a job well done. However, I think that the look and style might have been focused on a little too much and presided over the story in some ways. I think the biggest thing at fault here may be the script. There’s only so much you can do to make a script come alive, but if the script has plot holes, the finished movie has plot holes. The story could have been more thought out and directed in such a way that fewer questions were left unanswered. Like, we still don’t know what the Victory Project really is, why Shelley (Gemma Chan) stabbed Frank (Chris Pine), how is Alice’s (or any of the other women’s) body not rotting away from being held captive in a bed 24/7, and what the steamy sex scenes at the beginning has to do with any of this?

The trailers and Olivia Wilde herself made this movie seem like it was going to be a sort of feminist awakening in the sense that we were going to see female pleasure like we never have before. But the sex scenes that do exist in this film, don’t push the story forward at all. There either needed to be a lot more, or none. It felt like the sex scenes were there for the enjoyment of the audience and nothing else. The scene where Alice and Jack (Harry Styles) are getting handsy in Franks bedroom almost hints at the lack of control the women in this film have. When Frank walks in and Alice sees him, it’s as if she knows that she dare not stop things in order not to test her husband’s authority over her body. But that point is made moot when sex isn’t even a topic of conversation throughout the rest of the film.

As I said earlier, Florence Pugh’s performance as Alice is impeccable. She truly carries this film as it’s easy to get lost in her vehemence and forget about everyone else. Chris Pine also does a great job at creating a compelling and charismatic villain that we love to hate. He had very little screen time, but when he does have it, that scene is his. I could have used more of him and Florence Pugh together, as their scenes were unstoppable. But it’s the performance by Harry Styles that everyone is questioning. Through both watches, his accent seemed out of place. His “character” in the simulation was made to be British, but why? Harry Styles doesn’t have a thick accent as it is, and his accent in this film, even though real, felt fake. No one seems to think he was able to hold his own against Florence Pugh. But I think that if Harry Styles wasn’t the enormous pop star that we all know him to be, people might think differently. Was he phenomenal? No. But by no means was he bad. In the scene where Alice gets taken away by the men in red suits, I thought Styles actually gave a pretty good performance. Now, the “real life” scenes outside of the simulation where Styles is made to look like a desperate, greasy, nerd, were a lot to take in. It’s a look no one has ever seen on him, and while it makes sense, for the most part, in the story, he almost isn’t passable as that because of the household name that he is. Which, isn’t his fault.

When I saw a still from the movie of Alice and Jack lying in bed together with these odd gadgets holding their eyes open, I thought immediately that oh, it’s a simulation. I thought that if it was that I would hate it. But I think it was surprisingly done well. It made sense for the story and when we figure out that Alice is being held in this simulation against her will, to the motivation of Jack being a dead beat, angry that his wife is working all the time, it all comes together. Kind of. There’s still a lot of questions about the Victory Project simulation and who, what, when, where, why, and how, but it makes sense, even if underdeveloped.

Could this film be better? Absolutely. Does it live up to the hype? If you’re a Florence Pugh fan, then it does. I’m a huge Florence Pugh fan, so I liked Don’t Worry Darling and give it 4/5 stars for the fact that the story is underdeveloped. If you take it for what it is, a run of the mill psychological thriller, and don’t try to make it into this huge, profound, feminist story, you might actually enjoy it the first time you see it.