You were probably expecting me to review something really big this week. Maybe you wanted me to lavish praise on the final Mission Impossible film, maybe you wanted me to slate the live action Lilo and Stitch, or maybe you wanted me to get all giddy over The Phoenician Scheme — the latest box of treats from Wes Anderson. Instead, I am talking about Hurry Up Tomorrow, one of the worst reviewed films of the year, and I am hoping to make you change your mind on it.

If you’ve heard of Hurry Up Tomorrow, you’ve heard of it for one of three reasons. The first reason would be that you’re a fan of the director Trey Edward Shults, whose last two films (It Comes at Night and Waves) were divisive cinematic treats that I hold dear. Second, maybe you’re a fan of The Weeknd, whose musical career has gone from strength to strength as his acting career has… well, has gone from Uncut Gems to The Idol. Third reason, and probably the biggest, you’ve seen the reviews. I would not recommend Rotten Tomatoes as a yardstick for film quality, but if you do subscribe to those sorts of ideas, the film is rated lower than anything else currently in cinemas, at 16%. If I’m honest, I’m baffled by that. Hurry Up is certainly a film I expected to be divisive, but 16% feels plain incorrect. Art is subjective, blah blah blah, but did everyone watch the same film I did?

The plot is, to be fair, not exactly complex. We follow Abel, as a fictionalised version of The Weeknd (played by Abel Tesfaye, a real version of The Weeknd), while he begins to lose himself on tour. He is having problems with his voice and his manager (a skeezy Barry Keoghan) is interested only in money and drugs, all the while Abel is caught up thinking about his ex-girlfriend who he did wrong. At the same time, we follow a mysterious woman (Jenna Ortega, whose agent is randomly picking her roles with shotgun precision), a character wrapped in mystery, containing many mysteries. She’s quite mysterious. Our first glimpse of her is while she is burning down a house, and it becomes apparent shortly after that she is set on a collision course with Abel.

What follows is hardly a ground-breaking narrative. Even in the domain of nocturnal odyssey films (think Good Time or After Hours), the plot is low-key and you know exactly which films are inspiring particular narrative beats. What we get by the end is quite metaphorical and quite interpretive, which may be the first issue people have with it. Without a traditional narrative to follow from start to finish, lots of viewers may struggle to engage at all with the events on screen, and may never engage with the film on a deeper level. I don’t mean this to sound like a superiority thing, but I don’t think everyone is expecting a film that strays from the path of the typical narrative and veers this excitingly into the interpretive.

One criticism I have seen of the film is the performances. People still hate Tesfaye’s acting from his work on The Idol and I think it’s colouring how his performance is being seen. As will be a theme through this review, I’m not going to try and tell you that Tesfaye is a secret genius and is giving the best performance of the year. He’s not, he is not even one of the two best performances in this film that has three performances. However, he is compelling as a pathetic popstar who is losing focus on his place in the world. The Weeknd looks like a loser in this film, a loser you believe in because he’s so pathetic. That doesn’t work without Tesfaye at least putting in decent work and we overestimate how hard it is to play yourself.

He acts opposite Jenna Ortega who… who I now realise I’m ambivalent on. I’ve seen her in quite a few things now but she’s never stood out to me, positively or negatively. She’s never made a project worse by being in it, but she is never the best thing in a film. That’s the case again here; she performs well and is mainly a compellingly blank slate for the cinematography and score to create meaning with, which I am so excited to get to, in just a minute, hold on for me. 

I also want to briefly chat Barry Keoghan, who gives my favourite performance in Hurry Up. He plays Abel’s manager and friend, doing a compelling job at being absolutely terrible at both. We all know Keoghan can play rancid little freaks and the streak continues here, big thumbs up from me, good on ya lad.

Alright, let me really lavish some praise on this before I have to admit this isn’t perfect and I can’t be an unstoppable contrarian. The cinematography in Hurry Up Tomorrow is absolutely awesome. The film expands on the previous style for Shults’ films, particularly Waves, though this time with a new director of photography in Chayse Irvin (Shults’ regular DP Drew Daniels was working on Anora, so don’t worry, he’s doing fine). Irvin has one of the most fascinating filmographies I’ve seen in a while. In the last decade alone, he has worked on BlacKkKlansman, Lemonade and Blonde. A well respected crime caper, a genre shaping visual album and a biopic that is widely hated. What do we do with that? Blonde is such an interesting footnote here too, a polarising film yet one that has a distinctive and powerful visual language, for better and for worse. I’m getting a little side-tracked but my point is: it’s really interesting that Irvin seems to be building a reputation as being a great cinematographer in films that people detest. 

I guess Hurry Up is on that list. The swirling and spinning camera is an expansion on Waves, in which the camera would often be plonked in the middle of a scene and just spin around, catching all the characters doing their thing. There’s lots of that here; shots are super fluid and we’re launched around the set through them, never getting a sense of sure footing. For some, I can see how this is annoying and bad. These people are either cowards, suffer from motion sickness, or just don’t get what we’re doing here — only one of these things is a valid excuse. Surely if you’re watching the film as a Shults fan, this is him pushing his cinematography in new and exciting ways? How am I the only one seeing that?

What did you all think this was going to be? To me, this feels like a Trey Edward Shults film. I am a fan of his work and I felt satisfied with the way that he and his collaborators are in conversation with the work they’ve done before, expanding upon and commenting on it. Am I the crazy one for spotting that?

The score is bonkers stuff too. Daniel Lopatin (in collaboration with Tesfaye) is here on business after demolishing both my ears and heart with his work on Good Time and Uncut Gems. The latter is an important touchstone, as many have noted, because it stars Tesfaye playing a fictionalised version of himself in full The Weeknd “weird hair, don’t care” era. Since then, Tesfaye and Lopatin have worked together on a few The Weeknd albums, starting with After Hours, which came out only a few months after Uncut Gems. They’ve got a good working relationship; I like these last three albums and I’m glad they get to keep doing their thing together. Lopatin knows what he’s doing with the score here, and is it evocative of his work with the Safdie brothers? Sure. But it also works as a standalone thing and I dug it.

One really interesting thing about the score though is that it’s also the new album from The Weeknd. We enter a curious ouroboros situation here where it’s not clear where the album starts and the film ends. Versions of songs without vocals appear as the score and the live performances are of songs from the new album, with none of the biggest The Weeknd songs appearing until a very specific moment. More on that later. Personally? Love that. I listened to the album before seeing the film and the two fit together snugly, these bleak little nocturnal odysseys that spin out into different places. Which all leads me to ask: what did you all think this was going to be? To me, this feels like a Trey Edward Shults film. I am a fan of his work and I felt satisfied with the way that he and his collaborators are in conversation with the work they’ve done before, expanding upon and commenting on it. Am I the crazy one for spotting that?

To be fair, to be rational, to be less of a Gogo’s Crazy Bones about this, I’m not going to argue that the film is some perfect masterpiece. It is flawed in some big ways. The third act goes quite abstract and while I always enjoy when a plot becomes abstract, I need something emotional to latch onto. I was doing a lot of thinking during the third act but I wish I was doing more feeling. It’s a big old metaphor of a film and that’s cool, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be something else at the same time. It also pales in comparison to other thematically and narratively similar films. If you want to see an artist playing themselves and playing their music in a world of fiction, it doesn’t reach the heights of True Stories. If you want to see an examination of how the world chews up its music icons, and how they might eventually come to deserve it, Vox Lux remains a singular piece of art. If you just want to see The Weeknd suffer, we will always have Uncut Gems. There’s all of that… And then there’s also the scene. A scene that has required me to lazily use an ellipsis for a third time like some hack fraud writer. This next bit will go into spoilers, so skip the next section if you want to remain unspoiled.

Spoilers lie below, so tread carefully. But if you’re still here, let me tell you about the scene. In the third act of the film, Jenna Ortega’s character has kidnapped The Weeknd and has tied him up on a bed. What does she do with him in this moment? Naturally, she monologues to him, American Psycho style, about how much she loves his songs. Cue extended dance scenes and explanations of the songs “Blinding Lights” and “Gasoline” as a gagged and bound Abel stares on in a divine cocktail of fear, confusion and awe. As I watched this scene in the cinema, I felt like I was levitating. This is an unbelievably crazy swing and I was so happy to follow the film at this moment. If you’re already not on board, I see how you could be repelled, but I was only drawn further in. I was reminded of a scene from Under the Silver Lake (another polarising film from a cult A24 director) in which Andrew Garfield’s character meets an old man who claims to have written all the biggest songs of the past five decades. You’re so busy being baffled at what the film is doing that you allow the music to wash over you and do the magic. They’re really big scenes that take really big swings and really dictate how the rest of the film works for you.

I am left feeling that we have become too cynical as a people. I understand that we enjoyed making fun of everyone involved with The Idol. I rewatch videos talking about it regularly too; I’m only human (Mic the Snare’s video is obviously the cream of the crop.) But Lily-Rose Depp got to earn her indie cred in Nosferatu, Troye Sivan’s new album was widely celebrated, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph won an Oscar. All three are great performers, they deserve it, but if we’re ready to forgive those involved in The Idol, does Abel Tesfaye not deserve to be included in that? If we just need to have a man to blame for The Idol, Sam Levinson is right there, trying to scurry back to make more Euphoria. Condemning this film because he’s in it means people go into this film loaded with irony, ready to hate the interesting risks the film takes. 

Are you seriously telling me we should be dunking on a film like this when the live action Lilo and Stitch is out? This is where our ire is going? Grow up man, sick of it. Go to the movies, take a risk, dare to open your heart to something new. Or, if you really want, let our corporate overlords take over and never have to dare to feel something interesting again. Your choice. Hurry Up Tomorrow is this unique feature that somehow made it to the multiplex and our mockery of it means we’ll be unlikely to see similar again. Banger movie, Henry out, fix your hearts or die.

By this point, Luca Guadagnino being attached to a project is enough to have it skyrocket to the top of my Must Watch list. Since that first time seeing Call Me By Your Name on New Years Eve, I knew I had encountered a director who created special worlds. The release the following year of his polarising (but ultimately marvellous) Suspiria remake confirmed it and in 2022, Bones and All truly sealed the deal. Wherever Guadagnino went, I would follow (eventually follow, my unwatched copies of I Am Love and We Are Who We Are still look at me with very sad eyes.) The point I’m getting at is, whatever film Guadagnino made next I would watch, even if it was about something I don’t care about like, say, sports. Lo and behold, his next movie is about tennis. But, in a brave and Italian twist, Guadagnino asks us: what if tennis was sexy?

Challengers is the story of “what if tennis was sexy” but also unfurls into a great deal more. We follow a triptych through a 13 year period in which they fall in love, play tennis, fall out of love, stop playing tennis and eventually, find themselves playing tennis. I’m being glib but the impressive thing of the story isn’t necessarily the events of the story but the way they play out. From the opening five minutes, we get the basic idea of the plot. Two close friends fall in love with the same girl (who is forced out of playing tennis into coaching it by an injury), she ends up with one of them as he becomes a professional tennis player while the other fades into obscurity, but the two are reunited at a pivotal match for both their careers. Real simple set-up. But, the skill of the film is in its structure and how it bounces between its timelines like a ball in a tennis match (I am the first person to notice this, thank you for appreciating how smart I am.) While I was initially worried that it would get tiresome returning to the same tennis match and bouncing forwards and back from the past, what the structure actually does is layer meaning upon the initial premise. A simple tennis match becomes a fraught battle in which two former friends may be about to finally destroy each others lives, powered by lust, capitalism and pride. It’s a structure that I think will lend really well to multiple viewings but even on a first viewing, the constant build of narrative information creates a whirlwind of emotional meaning.

Obviously, that emotional connection with the narrative is only really possible because the characters that the narrative is built around are so strong, as individual units and as combinations. In fact, usually with these sorts of reviews I start by talking about the main character, an attribution that Challengers proudly rejects. These are three characters given equal weight and so I guess I’ll just run through the cast in the order they’re credited. Zendaya plays Tashi Donaldson, former tennis pro and current tennis manager/expert/wife. She is the catalyst for this passionate friendship implosion and gets two separate and magical introductions. In the modern day section of the film she’s a cold and steely figure who stands out as much in a crowded stand as she would if the crowd were disappeared, but then in the past she is a force of nature, bursting onto the court and into men’s hearts with a casual fury that bewitches. Having not seen Euphoria, I’m not that familiar with Zendaya as an actress, basically knowing her exclusively from sandy movies with large worms and spice lords. Clearly though, she has gotten good at picking the right directors to work with, because her star power and weapons grade “it girl” charisma are neatly fitted into the world of a rising tennis starlet who no one can look away from.

Speaking of our lookers, let me introduce you to Mike Faist as Art Donaldson. He caught my eye in West Side Story and was my favourite part of it, this tortured dream-boat of a boy who seemed destined for something magical. And now, here he is, making magic on screen yet again. Because we first meet Art as a professional tennis player, he has an easy power and swagger that you see with pro-sports people, but whenever we flash back, he’s still believable as a lanky loser with the possibility of doing something greater. He’s paired with Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig, also getting to play both against type and into fun. In real life and most of his other roles, O’Connor is a stone cold sweetie. He’s shy in interviews, talks about how much he loves Ratatouille and for all intents and purposes seems to have escaped from Pixar’s film. Here however, Patrick gets to be a real dog. There’s a grin O’Connor gives him that is a dirty, cocky, real arrogant kind of confidence that is also absolutely magnetic. Part of you wants to hate him, the rest of you is disappearing from your body in that long strand of drool hanging out your mouth. We really once again find ourselves up against the kinds of performances whose magnetism, charisma and sheer watchability are beyond analysis. Considering these are three actors I was familiar with before the film, I was astounded by how much they all disappeared into character.

If we’re talking about any of the technical elements of this film, we have to immediately talk about the musical score of Challengers, provided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Reznor comes from the band Nine Inch Nails and Ross is a producer who has been rolled into the NiN fold, but the two have become most famous for their film composition. Their most beloved work by film nerds at large (including yours truly) was for The Social Network, for which the pair won an Oscar, though they certainly haven’t been slacking since then. Four more collaborations with David Fincher, one more with Guadagnino and working on my ultimate soft spot Empire of Light come to mind as highlights, all before we even mention their second Oscar win for Soul. The two have range and Challengers proves it again. They take us to Gone Girl by way of Troye Sivan, Charli XCX and Sufjan Stevens all before getting lost in the mosh pit of the gay club. In lieu of breathlessly explaining the film to my partner after sprinting home from the cinema, I just played her the first track on the soundtrack and she instantly knew what this movie is. What is especially impressive about that fact is that while the score tells you what movie you’re in, it also delicately wrong foots you emotionally. Music theory was never my strong suit so indulge me here, but these delicate piano notes that sound initially mournful ascend in ways you weren’t expecting, leading to this bizarre euphoria rising from the dust. Those tracks then pair up with a central motif which returns across the film, layering in noise and meaning like butter in a lovely flaky pastry. At this point, I wouldn’t be too shocked if it’s my album of the year, such bangers does it contain.

And that would all be enough. I promise, I would really be happy with a film if that was everything I got from it. But there’s so much more, which I promise I won’t linger on too long because I know brevity isn’t my speciality. The cinematography is beautiful, getting right up into the faces of characters in very sensual ways and then doing bonkers stuff. Challengers is one of those movies where every shot is the best possible way of visually telling the story and oh lord was I hooting and hollering. There is a POV shot near the end of the film which sounds like the kind of thing that should cause motion sickness, yet is actually a case of absolutely sick visual brilliance. These are weaved together with an editing that allows the pace to never let up. As I said earlier, the structure could threaten to slow the film but the way everything slots together in the final piece is magic. We slowly get to know everyone and as the film moves along, the pace keeps quickening. There’s a brief moment where we slow down for a stormer of a storm and then bam, a frenetic final act that will make you want to scream with joy. For a film that isn’t particularly short, I could have immediately gone into a second screening and left that too with as much energy as the first round.

You’re probably not shocked after all that to hear that I think Challengers is one of the best films of the year. With the way UK distribution works, we’ve had an excellent start to the year and with a potential drought of films coming up, this is the kind of heart pumping, chest bashing, serotonin overload of a film to keep us sustained. Try and catch it while it’s still in cinemas but otherwise, just pre-order that blu-ray now, you are gonna want to come back to this forever and savour an ace movie.

So, this is a tricky review to write. I was very excited for Typist Artist Pirate King. I like Carol Morley’s most recent films, she’s got a solid little cast full of talented British actors assembled here and hey, a film about outsider artists who went underappreciated in their time is exactly my kind of bullshit. Even having heard negative reviews from people, it couldn’t deter me from seeing Typist. In hindsight, I should have let myself be deterred.

For those, presumably many of you, who don’t know what this film even is, let me do that thing we’re meant to do at the start of reviews and spell out the facts of what the film is. Our lead character is Audrey Amiss, a real life artist who suffered with what I believe the film states is paranoid schizophrenia. The exact details are unfortunately unimportant, as they only amount to the background detail of Audrey having been in and out of institutions for her whole life, and to the ongoing detail of her having schizophrenic episodes in which she mistakes people in front of her for people in her past. The story surrounding her is completely fictional however, a story in which she and her ex-carer take a road trip to Sunderland to enter Audrey’s work in a gallery.

Theoretically, good idea! The road movie is this mythical genre that doesn’t get many entries and it gets even fewer British ones (Radio On and The Trip feeling like the only major examples unless you want to be generous and chuck in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), so yeah, let’s throw another film into the mix! The problem with a bad road movie though is exactly the same as a bad road trip; it can start well but soon you start to realise you don’t know where the destination is. I’ve seen quite a few “aimless” movies recently which create a delightful aura to luxuriate in but Typist is a film that unfortunately deserves the title of aimless with all the negative connotations it encompasses. Though you know early on that the goal is Sunderland (and Lord, what a miserable goal to have), the hijinks that ensue become tiresome and you start to wonder what the point is.

I think part of this is deliberate? Throughout, there are numerous Don Quixote references (Kelly Macdonald’s character is literally credited as “Sandra Panza”), but they’re numerous to the point that even I, someone who hasn’t read or even seen an adaptation of Quixote, felt like I was being hit over the head. And again, even as a layman (with an English degree, to be fair) I understand why it’s a parallel you’d draw. Both are stories about individuals with rocky mental health, in which said individual is the head strong one leading a largely unwilling companion across the country, but I don’t think Morley has created the British Don Quixote here. That’s a stupidly large bar to set yourself, especially when your previous films have been “good, but…” It’s not an ambition I resent but it’s one that I think kneecaps a film that would have been well served with less references that seem placed largely to justify extended flights of fantasy.

If we want to chuck another positive in, I really like this cast! I don’t love what they’re doing but they’re all actors I am happy to see more of! Playing Audrey is Monica Dolan, one of our country’s most underrated actresses. She had a haunting turn in the Black Mirror episode Loch Henry earlier this year, got to play in one of the most interesting Inside No. 9 episodes and was great in Pride. She’s one of those “it’s them! From that!” actors, a crop that keep getting work because they are chameleonic in their approach and damn good at what they do. I think Audrey is a very difficult character to inhabit though. She has to be irrational and somewhat unlikable by design, while still being empathetic enough to root the emotional core of the film. To be blunt, I don’t know if it’s possible with this script but Dolan gives it her all. It’s not a performance that’s likely to be talked about long into the future, but you can’t deny that one of the best and hardest working actresses in Britain is once again giving it her all, even when she could get away with a fraction of her best.

Supporting Dolan on screen is Kelly Macdonald, another actress who has kept working and working hard over the last thirty years. Many (myself included) will have never forgotten her turn in Trainspotting but Macdonald has never rested on that laurel and starred in plenty of other iconic films, delivering in her roles the exact tone that the film requires of her. This will not be one of those. She is warm and certainly not doing bad work here, but it’s absolutely nothing remarkable. Sandra only has the levels of frustrated, pleased and the uninteresting zone between the two, which Macdonald hits easily, almost seeming annoyed that the film isn’t asking more of her. At least she spends the entire film in sweat pants and was therefore probably really comfortable while filming. The rest of the cast flit in and out, including a weirdly underutilised Gina McKee, and then the film ends. That’s it. People turned up, did something for a day or two and then got paid. Cool.

My big issue with the film boils down to its tone. Broadly speaking, the film is a comedy, I think. Obviously I didn’t make the film so I don’t know what the intent was but I did watch the film and in my humble opinion, that counts for something. Early on in the film, this light plinky plonk music and bemused looks from characters encourage the audience to laugh at Audrey, which extends into encouraging the audience to laugh at her during her psychotic episodes. They start relatively light but get much darker, except because the audience has already been conditioned to laugh they kept laughing as these moments got darker. To me, that feels wildly insensitive and makes light of a character who the film also seemingly wants us to be sympathetic for. I’m finding it genuinely hard to put into words the bizarre feeling I had in the cinema, where I was becoming really concerned for Audrey as everyone around me was laughing at her. Whatever balance Morley was trying to aim for here, I think she missed wildly and it completely tanks the film.

I can tell that there is a well meaning spirit behind Typist Artist Pirate King, which is why I find it difficult to tear it down. I’ve seen plenty of worse films this year but they were all soulless and hollow. It’s not as easy tearing down a film that was made with heart but completely missed the mark, especially when its budget is much lower and they clearly didn’t have as much to work with. This isn’t a film that makes me completely write Morley off as a filmmaker but as someone who had liked her other films, it starts to make me question those feelings. I hope she does something better next time and that this blip is something we can all just look over and forget exists.

Thanks for popping back, I know I’ve been gone for longer than I have before. It has been, in a word, busy. I’ve left the job that has drained my time and energy and enthusiasm and moved across the country to be with someone who restores all of those. I’m going to keep trying to write bits and pieces like this because it keeps me writing and even if the bigger pieces take a back seat for a while, it’s only so I remember how to make these words appear from my brain through my keyboard and onto your screen. Regardless, I appreciate y’all, especially if you read reviews like this, for films no one has heard of. It’s very nice and I think you’re cool. Anyway, that’s it, this is the end, bye!

I want to take you back to a simpler time; 2019. It was an amazing year for films and sent two stars into the stratosphere of success. One of them was actor turned first time director Olivia Wilde, who directed Booksmart, one of my favourite coming of age comedies. The other was Florence Pugh. Having previously impressed in Outlaw King, The Little Drummer Girl and Lady Macbeth, she spent 2019 releasing three films in which she delivered yet more incredible performances. After the streak of Fighting With My Family, Midsommar and Little Women (for which she became Academy Award nominee Florence Pugh), how could you not be ecstatic about what she was going to do next?

As it turns out, what came next was a collaboration between the two, a collaboration I was obviously immediately excited for. The form it was going to take was a thriller called Don’t Worry Darling, based on an existing screenplay that Wilde’s Booksmart co-writer Katie Silberman was to tinker with to better fit their sensibilities. So sure, we’re leaving the zone of comedy that Wilde proved so profficient in, but I was cautiously optimistic. I just had to sit put and wait for my trust in these two creative forces to be rewarded. So I did. I waited. And waited. And tried to ignore the stuff that started to come out. Rumours of rifts on set. Of affairs with pop star co-leads. The rumours grew faster and more furious, from (alleged) shouting matches to (alleged) spitting contests, putting more and more cracks in my faith. It was as if I was being taunted by Hollywood, the title itself staring back at me and daring me to still believe. Don’t worry, darling. Everything will turn out all right.

And so now Don’t Worry Darling is here. It actually exists, you can actually go see it in the cinema. But I haven’t told you what it is yet, or if it’s any good. So let’s do that. Our story is one that feels very familiar. Alice is a housewife living in a picture perfect fifties suburbia, being a docile housewife to Jack. In the morning, Jack goes off to work at “the Victory Project”, while Alice stays at home cooking, cleaning and chatting with the other housewives. Everyone is pretty happy with their lot, but told not to question what the men do at work. We, as the audience, have alarm bells ringing at this immediately. Alice takes a little longer to twig that actually, maybe, everything in Victory isn’t virtually perfect.

But that brings me to my first big issue with Darling, which is the structure. The first five minutes paint a very content picture of domesticity, until Alice realises that something here isn’t right. We spend THE REST OF THE MOVIE in this state of not-rightness, which gets exhausting at the length the film insists on. As the audience, we’re expecting this world to not be as it seems. Once Alice is also onboard, we’re ready to discover what is going down, but we are given almost no hints towards the true purpose of Victory until the very moment where the rug is rudely pulled out from under us. I have plenty to say about what is hidden under that rug, but we’ll save that for a little bit later. The point is, there needs to be a sense of escalation and its absence makes the majority of the film feel aimless. We’re just sitting here, waiting, hoping that soon Alice will find the thing that reboots the momentum of this film into something tastily watchable.

Speaking of tasty and watchable, it’s a very hot cast that Wilde has gathered here! But can they act? Hmm. Well. Tricky question that. I’m going to start by saying that for the most part, the cast are all doing solid work here. Throughout the film there are moments or casting choices that feel a little like missteps, but those are generally justified retroactively by things that are being hidden from us. For example, Nick Kroll feels like a bit of a rogue choice to play a charming fifties househusband, and his performance confirms that feeling. There are some moments where he shouts that are the wrong side of funny (God, we’re really skating around spoilers here) and then there are some moments where the charm he’s meant to ooze is just… Not quite there? It’s not a bad performance per se, just one that needs the justification that the end is going to deliver. Similarly hard done by the twist are basically all the female performers. Whether it’s Gemma Chan or Kate Berlant, the wives of Victory feel slightly too hollow. And again, from the outset, it’s clear that something isn’t right. We can tell that they are not as they should be, but it doesn’t justify these women occupying the role of hollow Fabergé eggs. Unlike the men of this world though, the twist doesn’t quite redeem their performances. You can feel these talented actors pushing at the seams to let their talent flow freely, but not quite reaching it. Ironically, the men are all justified by the awful end, the women are left in the lurch.

Still, there are three main performances I want to focus on. First, and probably most notable, is Harry Styles. You are probably familiar with Harry Styles, probably not as an actor though. There is a reason for this, which is that he isn’t a great actor. Is he as bad as I expected? No. That viral clip of him shouting really is as bad as his performance gets, the rest of the time IT IS FINE! And yet, he is the draw for the film. To be honest, I have very little to add to the discourse on him. Plenty of better actors could have done great with this role, but he is fine and is bringing people in. I think Styles especially struggles though when compared to the good performers around him, because they are so particularly talented. Chris Pine (a very underrated Chris) is great in the role of the leader of Victory. The role itself is not that interesting, but he does what he can with it, being charismatic and just a little dangerous. He has a tasty little dinner scene, you’ll know it when you see it, it’s a treat of OTT slimebag acting. You all know who I think the best actor in this film is though, it’s obviously Florence Pugh. She is my wife, I love her and those close to me are willing to forgive me if I someday drop everything to follow her around the globe. She is a damn great actor and while she’s so much better when the material is good (see Little Women), she can still elevate pretty crappy material. That’s what this situation is. As Alice, Pugh is always completely believable and empathetic, even when the narrative is not, and she is the thing about Darling that I can most enthusiastically praise. Pugh never does no wrong, we love her! All of us! No exceptions, total adoration!

I’m gonna dip into spoilers soon but before we do, some loose technical praise! My big problems with this film are structural and narrative based, so there’s actually a lot else that I do like. The look of the film has to be convincing to sell the later subversion and it is! Matthew Libatique does the cinematography and you get that sense of beautiful chaos that he lends to Darren Aronofsky’s films, but more composed than usual (apart from the moments where it isn’t composed, obviously). I’m also a big fan of the score from John Powell. There are a lot of tortured voices polluting and permeating the soundscape and that works for me. Music that sounds weird is my thing, sue me. Honestly, whenever I praise specific technical elements, I find myself a bit at a loss for who to praise. Do I praise production design, costume design or cinematography for this specific look? As someone who has never made a film, it’s tough to know, but I think I can just say across the board, good job! If you worked on this film, a film made during the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, you did a great job just to successfully make the film. The fact that it looks or sounds good is a miracle. Well done, sincerely.

This is the spoiler paragraph. If you don’t want spoilers, just skip it! But this film has been out almost a month, and I just have to talk about the insane and frustrating ending. Essentially, it turns out that the thing that’s going on is that we’re not in the real world, but a virtual world in which all the women are subservient captives and the men get to keep living their outside lives. It’s an incel thing, they’re upset that they don’t get enough attention from the women in their lives, so they kidnap them and put them into a world where they have no choice but to love them. Again, I knew that there would be something up, but the moment where this got revealed caused me to audibly mutter “oh no”. It makes no sense, compared to a version of this story where it’s all in Alice’s head, or one where we are in a real cult-like setting out in the desert. All the unexplained bits in this scenario are I guess glitches in the computer? That answer isn’t satisfying, but something has to try and fill the logic hole. It’s never explained, because the twist comes too late in the film to get any accompanying explanation aside from a handful of throwaway lines, which include my favourite line from the whole film, “when a man dies in here, he also dies in the real world”. Mainly, I think I hate this as a twist because it feels unnecessary. Why add that digital aspect unless you want to cheaply update this kind of narrative for the 21st century? Oh! It’s exactly because it’s a cheap and easy way to make your story feel relevant, because the villain is a podcast host. I hate it, but I’m almost tired of hating it now. Almost.

So it isn’t very good! I find the Don’t Worry Darling experience frustrating because it’s not without merit, but it is so essentially hobbled. The core of what this film is is broken. That means that no matter how pretty it looks, no matter how delightfully dense the soundscape is, even no matter how great Florence Pugh is, the film sinks. Once that twist hits, I defy you to start defending this mess. And yet it’s not even the worst film I’ve seen this year! Not even close! Not even the worst film of the month! I just think that it’s broken in interesting ways, which I’ve enjoyed discussing with friends and coworkers. So if you’re still tempted, sure! Go see it! You will have loads of things to talk about, which you might not get from a better movie like Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. But also, you should watch Mrs Harris Goes to Paris while you’re at the cinema. A tasty double bill, as a treat. Something sweet to wash away the taste of disappointment that Don’t Worry Darling still leaves me with.

Thank you all for bearing with me, as I crawl out of my accidental hiatus. I’ve just been very busy and not able to control my time quite as well as before, plus I’m doing more hours than ever at my work. I still enjoy writing but I struggle to both make the time and to get myself excited enough to write about anything. As such, some projects have fallen to the side. There was the second Twin Peaks: The Return post, a post about Kurt Vonnegut in film and something about Robert Eggers’ films, all of which may one day manifest themselves fully. But really, I will just continue to write the stuff that I’m passionate about. I’d like to do more pitching and paid writing, though again that’s about seizing the moment and writing the right thing at the right time. Thank you again for all still reading these. When someone sends me a message or says to me in person that they like my writing, it makes my day. It’s the motivation that keeps me writing and I’m genuinely fine about very few people reading my words, because what matters is when one of those people (one of you guys) enjoys my silly little ramblings.