Strange darling has its moments. Well, a couple
Film | Jorge Ignacio Castillo
Strange Darling
Moonlight Movies
Thrillers that rely too heavily on a twist have a limited shelf life (remember The Uninvited? A Perfect Getaway? The Invitation? Relax, nobody does) The memorable ones transcend the gimmick with substance, usually with well-rounded characters (The Sixth Sense) or good writing (Fight Club).
Strange Darling understands the assignment. The film’s heart is two profoundly damaged people with two default modes: fight or flight. And while the movie doesn’t stick the landing, a good portion of it’s intriguing.
Divided in six (scrambled) chapters and an epilogue, Strange Darling opens with a woman known as “The Lady” (Willa Fitzgerald, Reacher) running for her life from a shotgun wielding lunatic the movie calls “The Demon” (Kyle Gallner, Smile). The Demon is competent and proficient, while The Lady makes questionable decisions like stopping for a smoke.
An early flashback reveals they had met the night before in a classic hookup-gone-awry scenario. Both The Lady and The Demon are commitment-phobes and spend a fair amount of time negotiating the boundaries for their one-night stand. Yet the expectations for both go unfulfilled by a country mile.
To tell you more about the plot would be ruining the fun but I think I can say neither lead is fully a saint or a sinner. Also, be on the lookout for all-too-brief performances by Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey as former hippies who are terrible judges of character.
Strange Darling is… all right. I applaud director JT Mollner’s efforts to subvert expectations but the twist is easy to spot because there’s only so many ways the story could go. It often feels like Mollner is stretching a single idea — In corporate parlance, this could have been an e-mail. There’s also an overreliance on Willa Fitzgerald’s capabilities. It’s too much of an ask for an actor who’s all right but not charismatic enough to carry the film.