The worrying first reviews are in for director Olivia Wilde’s psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling. Wilde’s followup to 2019’s Booksmart couples Florence Pugh (Marvel’s Black Widow, Dune) and Harry Styles (Dunkirk, My Policeman) as 1950s housewife Alice and husband Jack Chambers, who live in an experimental community called the Victory Project. Gemma Chan (Marvel’s Eternals), KiKi Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk), Nick Kroll (Big Mouth), and Chris Pine (Wonder Woman) also star in the talked-about film, which held its world premiere Monday at the Venice Film Festival amid off-screen drama — including an alleged feud between Wilde and Pugh and claims that Shia LaBeouf was “fired” from Styles’ role.
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Pugh, who unravels a disturbing secret in the seemingly idyllic community, is “dependably compelling” but leads the “umpteenth Stepford Wives knockoff,” writes The Hollywood Reporter in the first reviews out of Venice. Writes Rolling Stone, Don’t Worry Darling is “part stunted social thriller, part thirst valentine — and the sort of misfire that should cause everyone involved to worry more than a little.”
Critics are praising Pugh — the Midsommar star is “easily the film’s most vivid and compelling personality,” playing Alice “in such fiery fashion that most other characters seem robotic by comparison,” according to The Independent — but have less love for what The Guardian is calling a “handsomely designed but hammily acted, laborious and derivative mystery chiller.”
Below are excerpts from the first Don’t Worry Darling reviews ahead of the film’s opening in theaters on September 23.
Independent: “Do worry darling … This isn’t the disaster that some predicted – but it is a messy, convoluted affair with some very contrived plotting. Styles gives a surprisingly dull and low-wattage performance as Jack. To be fair, he is playing a very dull character, a kind of Stepford husband … Beneath its polished, very stylish outer sheen, though, it’s as hollow as the lives of its pampered but empty-headed protagonists. You can understand easily enough why Alice is so desperate to get out of the community – and perhaps why certain cast members have been so wary about endorsing the movie itself.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “Don’t Worry Darling will more likely be remembered for the offscreen intrigue … than it is for much else in this umpteenth Stepford Wives knockoff. That’s not to say it’s without sizeable pluses, chief among them a meaty lead role for the dependably compelling Florence Pugh, who hasn’t played a woman in this much peril since Midsommar. It also scores points for allowing Chris Pine to show what a devilishly charismatic villain he can be. The high-concept, low-satisfaction psychological thriller marks an ambitious upgrade in scope for Wilde from the character-driven coming-of-age comedy of Booksmart, and she handles the physical aspects of the project with assurance. It’s just a shame all the effort has gone into a script without much of that 2019 debut’s disarming freshness.”
The Guardian: “Directed by Olivia Wilde, it superciliously pinches ideas from other films without quite understanding how and why they worked in the first place. It spoils its own ending simply by unveiling it, and in so doing shows that serious script work needed to be done on filling in the plot-holes and problems in a fantastically silly twist-reveal.”
Entertainment Weekly: “Behold the plight of the new desperate housewife: She is trapped in something — a sitcom (Kevin Can F**k Himself), a metaverse (WandaVision), or like Florence Pugh’s Alice in Don’t Worry Darling, a sun-baked suburban idyll so dreamy it’s surely too good to be true. Unfortunately, she’s also preceded by innumerable other films that have explored this black-mirror territory before: The Stepford Wives, Pleasantville, The Truman Show. That familiarity drains much of the tension and mystery from Darling, a movie high on snazzy midcentury style but considerably less bothered by the mechanics of cohesive storytelling. … But the movie, whatever its pile of ideas about love, gender constructs, and modern living, never really transcends Stepford mood-board pastiche. It’s all nefarious and gorgeous, Darling, and strictly nonsense in the end.”
