‘Don’t Worry Darling’ review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles head to HBO Max – Reuters

In case you’re worried, don’t worry darling is a perfectly usable slice of big-screen weirdness. This shrewd psychological drama is a brilliant, stylishly surreal thriller with something to say, featuring an endless array of gorgeous fashions and Florence Pugh in top form. What else do you want?

After premiering in September amid bizarre reports of filming and film festivals, Don’t Worry Darling is available to rent and buy online now. The 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD release date is November 29, but before that it will stream on HBO Max of November 7.

Pugh stars as a glamorous 1950s housewife living the perfect suburban life. She even has a trophy husband, played by pop star Harry Styles in a wardrobe of crisp suits and enviable mid-century shirts. But none of the gossipy wives know where their husbands go each day in their shiny Cadillacs, and Pugh begins to wonder what really drives the sinister leader of the sunny desert town, played by Chris Pine. No one else seems to care, sweetie, but there’s definitely something weird going on in this retro utopia.

Director Olivia Wilde slowly ramps up the unsettling aspects of this strange romance, tormenting Pugh’s increasingly unstable housewife with teasing visions and growing paranoia. Wilde also plays one of the other wives, perpetually armed with a cocktail and a sharp pencil side eye. There’s a hint of The Stepford Wives about them, and you’ll probably also find yourself thinking of a number of mid-century melodramas and home chillers that stab at suburban fantasy, from Rosemary’s Baby to Blue Velvet and the like. by Get Out.

So yeah, obviously you know there’s a twist coming. I can’t get through a short TV episode of black mirror Where Developers Where Tales from the Loop without anxiously wishing someone would just tell me the plot twist so I could go do something more interesting. It’s a real feat to spin a thread that keeps the viewer captivated for an entire film. Don’t Worry Darling largely succeeds: As John Powell’s unsettling score weaves together classic 1950s pop cuts, the delightfully elegant weirdness soundtrack, I found myself half hoping for no explanation . There are only so many endings to choose from for these kinds of stories, and an overly literal solution rarely quite lives up to the mood.

Florence Pugh and Harry Styles in Don’t Worry Darling.

Warner Bros.

As the film has premiered at film festivals in recent weeks, the bizarre happenings on screen have been accompanied by extraordinary happenings among the director and the film’s stars. It’s not worth rehashing drama, but it’s ironic that the off-screen drama spurred on a film that could have easily sunk without a trace. Don’t Worry Darling is a medium-sized movie and an original story – the kind of thing you don’t see so much of in theaters anymore. Even with huge stars on board, Don’t Worry Darling could easily have been one of those streaming movies that everyone talks about for two years and raves about the trailer and then one day you wonder , hey, what happened to this movie, and realize it was released on Netflix Prime Video Hulu Plus three months ago.

But don’t relish too much messy gossip. The frenzied media circus threatens to overshadow the artistic value of a film directed by a woman, to an extent barely conceivable for male filmmakers. Still, even if you haven’t been following the spit and spats, it’s simply impossible to get into Don’t Worry Darling without preconceived notions. You’re not supposed to. Styles is the hottest pop star in the world, Pugh the hottest movie star. The sizzling pairing of characters is the whole point.

At least it should be. Pugh proves his talent with almost casual ease, embodying theatrical angst while leaving a lingering impression that he still has more in the tank. Pugh delivers a commanding, often hypnotic performance that anchors the film even in its weakest moments.

And Harry Styles is also there.

If we’re being charitable, it’s one of those blessed occasions where a performer’s limitations suit the character a bit. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can’t convince anyone he’s a human person but is perfect as an inarticulate barbarian or stiff robot. In Don’t Worry Darling, Styles’ pomade husband is a fantastic figure, so it’s only fitting that he struggles to inject emotion into his lines. It is less a performer than an accessory – another shiny piece of furniture filling the decor, like a rug or an elegant lamp: beautiful, empty and perpetually blending into the background.

At one point in the film, I thought of Matt Smith’s turn in Last Night in Soho. Like Don’t Worry Darling, Last Night in Soho is an ambiguous fantasy drama about a woman caught in a whirlwind of retro glamor and male violence. Smith played the sharp-edged silver-tongued seducer, embodying a seething mix of sexuality, freedom, jealousy and menace. Here, Chris Pine provides all of those things, because Style certainly doesn’t.

Giving Styles the benefit of the doubt, throwing such a magnetic performer on stage and wearing gloriously playful clothes subverts the retro manhood of Pine, Jon Hamm in Mad Men, James Bond of Sean Connery (glimpsed on a poster in the film) . One scene, which plays on Styles’ performative strengths as it puts him squarely in the spotlight, offers a whiff of critique for how he’s made to frolic in front of us. Which is just one of the many ideas floating around Don’t Worry Darling like ice cubes pouring out of a cocktail glass.

These ideas may not be particularly subtle or original, but at least there is Something goes under sharkskin suits and pin-up dresses. Whether the film makes sense of these themes is another question, but the whole thing turns out to be rooted in seething topical anger.

So the music, the clothes, and at least one of the stars are worth your time. Though far from the sum of its parts, Don’t Worry Darling is a thoroughly entertaining B-movie.

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles head to HBO Max – Reuters