Don't Worry Darling

Don't Worry Darling is two different movies, both playing out at the same time; one of these is actually an effective psychological thriller, that could have stood on its own.  The other movie, is so misguided in its fixation on having a shocking twist, which it doesn't deliver, that it effectively destroys both movies.  The parts of the film that fall into the psychological thriller category center around a character played by Florence Pugh, who is either going mad, or is the only sane person in the room.  As we are living in a time where the term "gaslighting" has taken a prominent place in the cultural discourse, the overwhelming uncertainty that Pugh's character undergoes speaks to experiences that each audience member is familiar with.  Pugh's performance hits all the right notes, starting with her introduction as a newlywed 1950s housewife, who puts on the naïve façade, while she is clearly quite intelligent and an independent thinker.  As either she, or the world around her starts to deteriorate, and signs of madness begin to appear, her expressions and demeanor change gradually, and reflect the intensity of the moment.  Similar to Joaquin Phoenix's performance in Joker, Pugh creates a compelling character, who is deserving of a much better film than this.  Unfortunately the director  Olivia Wilde wasn't satisfied with delivering a great psychological thriller, rather she had her sights set on a dark social commentary, meant to lambaste a segment of society that doesn't even exist - the irony is that her whole movie is basically an exercise in gaslighting.  In her misguided "twist", Wilde contends that modern men bemoan the advances of feminism to such an extent that they long for a 1950s world, where women get up in the morning with only once purpose, and that is to please their men.  Wilde suggests that men today are so obsessed with this as an ideal, that they would be willing to drug, abduct, and keep women in an indefinite coma, just so that they would be more compliant. These modern men are willing to work thankless double-shifts at Burger King, just so that they can come home for a few short hours to what's effectively a video game about 1950s suburban life.  It's hard enough to keep your fresh batteries in your wireless controller - can you imagine the maintenance to keep this video game running smoothly?  As I'm sure President Biden said when he saw this movie, "C'mon man!".