SPOILER WARNING!

  Would you live your dream life if given a chance? You could have a perfect life with a perfect home. There would always be food on the table. You would never have to work, so you are free to spend your days chatting with your friends and shopping with an unlimited budget. Your only obligations are to cook and keep your -already spotless- house clean. Best of all, you could have a husband that provides for and unconditionally adores you. Your life could be full of love and joy, and nothing would ever be less than perfect. You could live your dream life.

  Well, is this your dream life? It may sound perfect, but is that the truth? Would the puffy dresses and endless dinner parties be enough for you? Or would you yearn for more? For a career, success, freedom? However, these aspirations weren’t a thought amongst women presiding in Victory, California.

  Don’t worry Darling, the 2022 psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde, is based on a story by Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke, and Katie Silberman. The film that stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Kiki Layne, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, Chris Pine, and Nick Kroll follows a young housewife living in a commercial suburban town who begins to suspect that nothing is as it seems. 

  Since its release on September 23rd, Don’t Worry Darling has racked up some controversial reviews. Earning only 38% and two stars on Rotten Tomatoes, how could the film be doing so poorly? With a star-studded cast and a seemingly interesting storyline, how did Don’t Worry Darling miss the mark? 

Cinematography

  Where Don’t Worry Darling didn’t lack was in the cinematography that contributed perfectly to the theme, a perfect world. The film transported the viewer back to the 1950s with endless pastel colors and perfectly polished vintage cars. Everything was truly perfect. Each house in the suburban neighborhood was beautiful and uniform on the outside and breathtaking on the inside. Even the people were beautiful and clean-cut, never an imperfection to be found. Everything was clean; there was never a morsel of dust (although the wives would clean like there was). From the dance classes to the husbands pulling their cars out of the driveways to wishing their wives well as they drove off to work, everything had symmetry, everything was just perfect- too perfect-and this contributed perfectly to the plot.

  When we get to the point where we find out the truth, that Jack (Styles’ character) had kidnapped Alice (Pough’s character) and kept her trapped in a simulation world, the setting shift is nothing short of jaw-dropping. You could find minimal similarities between the natural world and the simulation. The delicate pastels were replaced with harsh browns. When scanning the room, I doubt you could find a single clean spot in the cramped apartment. Nothing was clean. The dishes piled high in the sink and trash littering the floor was the perfect setting for an episode of hoarders. Everything seemed to be caked in dirt, including the main characters. An unconscious Alice could be found on the bed with futuristic-eye sensor-VR-things in her eyes and roots so grown out that her dirty blonde hair was replaced with a -literal- dirty brown hair. The creepiest part? Harry’ Styles’ Jack was genuinely unrecognizable. The seemingly perfectly kept Brit that charmed the audience was an American with the voice of a serial killer. He had the worst case of acne scars and had long greasy hair (Yes, we finally got long-haired Harry, but at what cost?) Wilde did a fantastic job polarizing the character from himself in the two worlds. He had been extremely attractive before, but his real-world version will haunt my dreams. I mean, his t-shirt had visible dirt on it. It is truly remarkable how antipodean his characters are- until the truth begins to unfold in the VR world and his true possessive and demented personality starts to shine through. 

Storyline

  The Stepford Wives meets Ready Player One; this basically sums up the movie. Although entertaining, must we see the same-overused storyline of men having too much power? This storyline, used time and time again, has caused this movie to be anything but unpredictable. I genuinely believe that if not for the awfully vague trailer, no one would need to see the film because the twist is so painfully obvious. Additionally, the build up to the climax was so slow that the audience could make a very accurate conclusion for themselves.

   Where The Stepford Wives prevailed and this movie lacked was in the twist ending; in the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, the main antagonist’s wife had surprisingly been the one behind the wives turning into submissive robots, slaves to their husbands. Furthermore, the 2022 movie lacks diversity. Marital diversity was displayed in The Stepford Wives as we saw a same-sex couple. And, although less than in Wilde’s film, we could see racial diversity. There were only heterosexual couples in Don’t Worry, Darling. Perhaps this was the film’s attempt at keeping the accuracy of the 1950s? But then how could there be an interracial couple, played by Kiki Layne and Ariel Stachel?

Acting

  “The best thing about #DontWorryDarling is that I was lucky enough to meet @arielstachel. They cut us from most of the movie, but we are thriving in real life,” Layne wrote in an Instagram post after the movie’s release. Layne’s character Margaret was crucial to the storyline as she caused Alice to question her reality. I wish they would’ve kept more of her scenes because there is so much left unanswered about her. Moreover, Alice and Bunny (Wilde’s character) discussed being close to Margaret, but there was no sufficient proof of their friendship with her within the film. Regardless of her scenes getting cut, Kiki Layne gave a phenomenal performance. 

  Florence Pugh is known for her outstanding acting in movies such as Little Woman and Midsommar and has received nominations for an academy award, the BAFTA award, and more. Styles, on the other hand…is a great singer! Much to the opposition of many, I believe his acting in the film was pretty good, but he was no match for Pugh, a thriller veteran. 

Empty feminism 

  In interviews about her latest movie, director and producer Olivia Wilde praised Don’t Worry Darling as a “feminist thriller,” and at first glance, it does seem like a feminist movie, intented to “fight the patriarchy”. As you dive further, the movie’s message seems to not convey the message Wilde intended. This movie had so much potential to lend itself to the feminist movement, but it lacked in many ways. I reason that Alice was perfectly content with her life as a housewife in the “Victory” world before Margaret’s undoing. Once Alice started remembering things and piecing together the truth, she wanted out. Yes, Alice had been successful as a surgeon in real life, but there was no suggestion of wanting anything but to cook, clean, and be submissive to her husband in the virtual world; Alice wanted to know the truth once Margaret made her realize that something was wrong. She never asked (or had an internal desire) to work or do anything besides what was asked of her. You could argue that the women in The Stepford Wives didn’t want freedom, but that is because they were literally turned into robots; the women in the victory project had free thought. 

 This movie also portrays toxic feminism with an outdated feminist message. The film perceives being a housewife as bad, which totally misses the point of feminism. The definition of feminism is choice, meaning you can be more family-oriented or career-focused.; You deserve the right to choose. Taking care of the house while your partner works is not bad- which is what the movie seems to be telling viewers. Oppression is having your choice taken away, which the women had when their husbands unwillingly put them into the VR world. This film reinforces toxic femininity. 

   In The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Olivie Wilde addresses the lack of “female pleasure” in film and says that in Don’t Worry Darling, the only pleasure displayed is for the females. After watching the movie, I can confirm that there are a lot of *ahem* intimate scenes between Jack and Alice, so Wilde did live up to one of her promises… that there would be sex. The problem with the intimate scenes in this movie is that although Alice seems consenting in the VR world, she is actually drugged, tied up to her bed, and unconscious in the real world. So that means these acts of “female pleasure” are non-consensual, which doesn’t sound like feminism to me. 

  In the end, I had more questions than answers. There were so many plot holes. Yes, some might’ve been placed purposefully so that the watcher could make inferences, but even then, there were many critical unanswered questions. For example, why did Gemma Chan’s character randomly stab her husband with no warning or context? There was no true impact of this act because we didn’t know her reasoning except for “it’s my turn now,” and then there was no follow up afterwards. Additionally, why did the men die in real life if they died in the simulation but not the women? Why is Peg always pregnant? Was she pregnant in the real world, and how would that work? Why did Frank want Alice to challenge him and question the Victory Project during the dinner party? Does it feed his ego of dominance over women? Perhaps, just like in The Stepford Wives, his wife Shelley is behind the victory project, and he wants to get out. 

We are going to need a sequel.

   Overall, the movie is mediocre. I sincerely believe that it wouldn’t be successful if not for the star-studded cast because, again, it lacked in many ways. There was so much potential to benefit the feminist movement, but it fell flat. Therefore, don’t worry…about going to see this movie.