'Don't Worry Darling' may have the magnetism of Harry Styles and the tremendous skill of Florence Pugh, but it's still all frosting and no cake. Caroline Siede reviews Olivia Wilde's headline-grabbing second feature.
clearly relishes the chance to go full-tilt arthouse visionary after the success of her more grounded debut feature, the excellent teen buddy comedy "Booksmart." The trouble is that once the answers are finally revealed, they’re so underbaked and poorly explored that they wind up coming across as confusing at best and downright silly at worst. Suddenly all that time spent teasing out what’s actually going on at Victory just feels wasted.
Of course, "Don’t Worry Darling" certainly isn’t alone in the "pretty but empty" vein of psychological thriller filmmaking. In fact, it shares a lot in common with’s recent swinging-sixities thriller "Last Night in Soho," which similarly struggled to balance its stylish visuals with meaningful feminist storytelling.