Strange Darling comes to us from writer/director JT Mollner, here effectively making his feature debut. Yes, he technically made his feature debut with Outlaws and Angels in 2016, but I can’t find any evidence that movie ever existed outside of Sundance. Even more perplexing, this film features Giovanni Ribisi — yes, the character actor, of all people — on cinematography duty for the first time on a feature film.
Of course, none of this tells me anything. Neither did the trailer. But the trailer did make a huge point of hyping up the shared producer with Barbarian. Thing is, Roy Lee is such a prolific producer, that’s about as informative as saying that Jason Blum produced.
Thus I took the advice of so many correspondents and went into this totally blind. Big mistake. Because seriously, this movie needs a big damn CONTENT WARNING for explicitly depicting a sexual assault. We’ll come back to that.
We lay our scene in the Hood River County of Oregon. And it was indeed shot in the Portland metro area, with additional shots in the Mount Hood National Forest, so kudos for that. The given year is 2020, but there’s no mention of COVID whatsoever. Would anyone out in the sticks even care about lockdown? I digress. We’ll circle back to that.
The initial premise is so dirt-simple that the characters don’t even have names. There’s a serial killer on the loose and we’re watching the last day of the murder spree. Willa Fitzgerald plays “The Lady” running away while Kyle Gallner plays “The Demon” chasing after her. As the plot unfolds, we get brief appearances from Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey as well. And I’d be remiss not to mention the voice-over cameo from Ribisi himself.
The film starts out as a brutally simple suspense thriller, but there are a few noteworthy wrinkles. By far the biggest one is that this is a story in six chapters and an epilogue… presented out of sequence. In this way, the filmmakers are diabolically adept at presenting new context to various clues and setups and payoffs, totally reshaping everything we thought we knew at the time. It’s a master class in unconventional plotting, with each new reveal and reversal hitting like a sucker-punch to the throat.
The non-sequential structure of the plot, plus the emphasis on suspense and tension and violence, all indicate a strong Tarantino influence. It’s certainly another factor that while the film is more or less set in the present day, the setting and action are all distinctly analog. The film even looks analog, shot entirely on 35mm, and the movie opens with a title card to make damn sure we all know it was shot on film. Which was apparently more important than letting us know about the sexual assault, but whatever.
Most of all, the Tarantino influence is keenly felt in the dialogue, the interactions, the secrets kept and revealed between our two leads. As the plot unfolds, we start to figure out that this straightforward predator/prey scenario is actually a highly convoluted battle of the sexes. This is very much a movie about the romantic/sexual/social roles of the standard societal genders. What rules apply to each of them, how those rules can be broken, how much power one really has over the other, and how that power can be used or abused.
Which brings us to the sexual assault I keep alluding to. This film is highly preoccupied with the vulnerability that comes with sex. The danger that two people potentially put themselves into when they agree to let each other in to such an extent. And these two characters make it a point to go to the furthest, craziest extent possible.
This is especially pertinent in the year of COVID. While lockdown is never directly mentioned, it would make all manner of sense if these two people were bored out of their skulls and desperate for any kind of human connection. Unfortunately, there are certain aspects of the plot that wouldn’t really make sense if lockdown was in place. Granted, people out in rural bumfuck counties probably wouldn’t be concerned about wearing masks, but it was a boneheaded move to place the film in 2020 without acknowledging the global pandemic.
Really, the whole movie seems to have a problem in terms of theme. The labyrinthine plot is certainly a factor, as it’s hard enough to parse out who the hero and the villain are supposed to be, if such labels apply at all. But looking back at who suffers and why, there’s a disturbing trend of supporting characters who end up dead simply for trying to be helpful. The implication is that we shouldn’t believe anyone who claims to be a victim, we shouldn’t be so quick to help strangers, assume that everyone is potentially a serial killer, and so on. It’s a morally repugnant stance, and not nearly the powerful feminist statement the filmmakers seem to think it is.
It’s funny how Strange Darling and Blink Twice came out on the same weekend. Both inconspicuous suspense thrillers, both heavily focused on gender dynamics and sexual assault, both expertly plotted and deeply disturbing. That said, I expect that Blink Twice will only get better with repeat viewings while Strange Darling will quickly get worse. It makes all the difference that Zoe Kravitz and her team put so much effort into nuanced and thoughtful examination of relevant themes, backing up their feminist statements through devastatingly clever plot twists. Compare that to Mollner and his team, who put all their thought and effort into pulverizing the audience with their own expectations, but without apparent regard for the statements the picture was making in the process.
To be clear, Strange Darling is a hell of a ride. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner are utterly captivating, and it’s astounding how well they can keep up with all the reversals and revelations about their respective characters. This could very well be the best use of non-sequential storytelling I’ve seen since Memento, worthy of deep and serious study for how setups and payoffs can be subverted and redirected to mind-blowing effect.
The only real downside — and it’s a big one, bordering on a dealbreaker — is the film’s grim outlook toward sexual power dynamics. Parsing out the film’s plot is great fun, but parsing out the film’s themes feels repulsively sleazy. The sheer filmmaking mastery on display — especially for such a novice director — is impossible to ignore, but this is a tough recommendation. Take the content warning and proceed accordingly.