DON’T WORRY DARLING

Despite a stella performance from Florence Pugh and brilliant work by supporting actors and production crew, DON'T WORRY DARLING failed to delivery the kind of returns the film’s investors were likely hoping for. And a 6.3 rating on IMDb won’t be what the film’s producers were looking for. Let’s look at why this stunningly well shot and directed film didn’t live up to its promise.

The subtlety of the film kept me more than intrigued for over 60 minutes. I was totally involved because of the psychological nuance portrayed by the cinematography, editing, direction, and visual language of the film. And then there’s Florence Pugh. What a talent!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Things started to unravel for me (and a lot of others), when Alice’s (in Wonderland – geddit?) world starts to unravel, too. Her hallucinatory experiences suggest to her that all is not as it seems to be. Her unease turns to shock, and her shock turns to horror. She is tormented by her suspicions until she confronts Frank – the character seemingly behind this whole perfect world charade, and the illusion of the government research project: Victory.

The confrontation with alpha male Frank breaks into the 3rd with a dinner table bang.

Alice’s ‘perfect’ relationship with ‘perfect’ husband Jack falls apart. Jack is a brainwashed puppet of Frank. Alice begs Frank to run away with her. Of course Jack betrays her, and hands her over to the authorities, who give her electro-convulsive shock treatment.

This savage treatment pops Alice out of her rabbit hole. We now realise that all we and Alice have experienced is a simulation. She is actually being fed the whole experience in the present day, when Jack, it seems, talked her into doing the simulation as a means to escape their shoddy and overworked life in the real world, and become ‘perfect’.

The last half hour of the film contradicts all that has gone before. Why is Alice so traumatised by her realisations? Why do authority figures try to catch her, with an obligatory car chase? Why does the perfect road they live in start to explode? Why does Frank’s wife kill him?

Wouldn’t Alice’s ‘awakening’ in the sim be noted in the real world, where adjustments would be made, or she would be ‘woken’ from the technologically enabled dream?

I couldn’t work it out, and wonder if it can be worked out.

The film’s story suggests that the film’s screenwriters haven’t asked themselves brutally honest questions about the film’s plot. It suggests that relevant people have become so caught up in what they are doing that they have stopped asking the kind of questions audiences will ask, and those are the most important questions all screenwriters must ask themselves.

Because an audience’s experience of the film you are writing is all that matters. Sure, that experience will be hugely effected by the film’s cinematography, editing, direction, visual language, and the performances (and who’s performing them); but you must do all you can as a screenwriter to tell the best story you can before anyone shoots it and turns it into a film.

It must be a watertight film story that bears script reader/audience scrutiny, and takes the film’s audience on a satisfying journey to a place, and in a way, they want to go.

The issue with DON’T WORRY DARLING is the concept itself, which starts to work against itself in the last act. The producers changed the film from a brilliant, sexy, innovative psychological thriller into a by the numbers action adventure with mandatory pursuit of protagonist by evil antagonists. This change betrays the faith and interest of the audience, and presents them with implausible events that dissolve their interest in the story of the film.

The film merges THE MATRIX with THE TRUMAN SHOW and ends up with neither, and with no satisfying conclusion that is set up by the premise and the plot.

The screenplay gives Alice no satisfactory way out of the story that enables her to triumph in a way that enables us to triumph by proxy. That means the audience ultimately goes nowhere.

Watch this sometimes utterly brilliant and intriguing film to learn things from it about what you should and shouldn’t do as a screenwriter trying to sell your scripts. And don’t forget to marvel and the jaw dropping talents of Olivia Wilde (also the director) and Florence Pugh.  

My DON’T WORRY DARLING rating is 7/10