My Don’t Worry Darling hot take is that the movie is fine. Not great by any means, but fine. A comfortable 3 – 3.5 on Letterboxd.
I couldn’t help but try to stifle laughter when there was that scene of Harry Styles yelling at Florence Pugh. Even worse was when he was dancing. But a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes (as of September 24) is an exaggeration (aggregate film ratings are flawed for so many reasons, but this is just the world we live in).
Listen, I’m not trying to defend the movie by any means. It has faults that range from simple swings and misses to cowardly avoidance of the true undertones the movie is trying to attack. But the Twitter conversation around Venice and Olivia Wilde and Spitgate has just completely shifted the actual conversation the movie wants the audience to have.
Let’s start with the most click-worthy flaw: Harry Styles.
WARNING: SPOILERS for Don’t Worry Darling. Obviously
The Jack character is miscast. I respect and understand the attempt the movie made at using Styles and his star power to elevate this movie, but it doesn’t work. I don’t believe him as Victory Project Jack, and I certainly don’t believe him as Incel Jack. His acting is not great, but not atrocious like social media wants you to believe.
The issue with Harry Styles that is almost unfixable is that it’s impossible to see him as a character. Every time he was on screen, all I could think of was that it was Harry Styles in a movie and not Jack Chambers, played by Harry Styles.
The simple fix for the Harry Styles problem is to swap him and Chris Pines’ roles.
The business decision is you get to keep Harry Styles in the movie. Exploit his star power in trailers and promotional content to get more people in the theater while giving him a much lighter load to carry in the movie with much less screen time. The Frank character honestly might be suited better for a figure of Styles’ cultural stature anyways because it could allow for a deeper satire on internet idol culture and violent masculinity (more on that later).
The filmmaking decision is you give a much better, more experienced actor like Pine a layered role that Styles was unable to fully flesh out (especially next to a generational force like Florence Pugh). I could never believe Styles as Jack, especially after the full reveal of what the Victory Project is. I don’t know if Pine would land the twist either, but the odds are far better. When I saw cheek acne goatee incel Harry Styles I laughed. It felt like a joke.
The flaw with the movie that is much more glaring is the undercooked (the oven was never even turned on tbh) political statement. If you watch the movie, you get what the whole idea is. The modern misogynist has retreated into the virtual world as a reaction to the social progress made in terms of gender equality and equity. They feel emboldened by the algorithms Silicon Valley pushes out and profits off of, bla bla bla Facebook Discord Reddit. Alt-right pipeline, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, etc etc etc. People are aware of this.
The problem the thesis of the movie faces is it presents these ideas and does nothing with them. Of course, I’m not asking a movie to solve an extremely pressing and complex social issue in 123 minutes, but tiptoeing around the subject for three-quarters of the movie until the reveal and then literally never mentioning it again is inauthentic.
The spec script Don’t Worry Darling is based on was written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke and circulated in 2019 on The Black List, a popular yearly survey of the most liked unproduced screenplays. The original script, while wildly different and in many ways inferior to the final product released this past weekend (it included a 13 Reasons Why-esque scene involving a broom), more sharply addressed the social issues presented by the premise. It still doesn’t do a great job interrogating the circumstances of the incel world, but it at least tries, whereas the rewrite done by Katie Silberman essentially throws all of that out in favor of more time spent in the virtual 1950s world attending weekend barbeques and going shopping at malls, adding nothing to build tension or advance the plot.
Somewhere in the 123-minute runtime, a good movie is buried. One that takes the time and care to address the problems Big Tech has created and/or exacerbated in terms of social progress. It just needed another rewrite and maybe some different casting choices.
Some other questions that are sitting in my head but can’t answer so hopefully someone reads this and can scream the answers in my face:
Why is it that when men die in the virtual world they die in real life? Is it just men or is that the same for everyone?
Why does Gemma Chan stab Chris Pine?