Don’t Worry Darling Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Out

Olivia Wilde’s new mystery-thriller movie Don’t Worry Darling is already buzzing as a trending topic, thanks to all the off-screen drama surrounding the film – but is the actual movie any good? First critic reviews of Don’t Worry Darling started to drop on Labor Day, when the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and now it has an official Rotten Tomatoes score. As of writing this, Don’t Worry Darling has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 46% with 24 reviews submitted. 

That’s definitely not the best start for convincing the public that this is a must-see cinema worth a theatrical trip – so the offscreen drama may be the best selling point for the film, right now. 

If you haven’t been keeping up: Don’t Worry Darling director Olivia Wilde had behind-the-scenes tensions with (fired) actor Shia LaBeouf and star Florence Pugh go public leading into the Venice premiere, as well as Pugh showing displeasure with how her sex scenes were discussed by Wilde. In just one day of getting through the premiere in Venice social media has been lit up with buzz about Pugh avoiding the press conference; possible tensions (or an outright break-up) between Wilde and Harry Styles, after she and the pop star got together while making the movie, and there’s even a viral video of what could be Styles spitting on his male co-star Chris Pine during the film’s premiere. 

At this point, onlookers are already saying that Don’t Worry Darling is almost worth more as a making-of documentary and future dramatic docuseries than it will be as a film. As you can see below, a lot of critics probably would agree with that sentiment: 

“Pugh, the 26-year-old British actress… gives Alice as much inner life as the skittering screenplay allows, and Styles, at least, looks fantastic in a suit,” EW critic Leah Greenblatt states. “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.”

Time critic Stephanie Zacharek thinks that the merits of Don’t Worry Darling supersede any bad press or stigma the movie is facing: 

“Don’t Worry Darling, no matter where you stand on the matter of Olivia Wilde’s personal life – or, for that matter, what you make of her ambitions – deserves to be judged on its own merits, and it does have a few… the plot is cleverly worked out: there’s an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist that’s much better than nearly every Shyamalan twist, save perhaps the one in The Sixth Sense. And there’s at least the germ of an intelligent idea at the heart of Don’t Worry Darling.”

Don’t Worry Darling will open in theaters on September 23rd.