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Every lamp and ladylike cocktail dress, every convertible and clink of a martini glass is a perfect reflection of retro chic in Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling.”

Who wouldn’t want to live in the suburban Shangri-la of Victory, with its minimalist, mid-century modern homes and bawdy, booze-soaked dinner parties? Young, attractive families find their every want and need fulfilled under the idyllic shimmer of the Southern California sun.

But something’s not quite right here. That much is clear to us early on, and that nagging suspicion increasingly gnaws at Florence Pugh ’s perky party girl, Alice. Sure, shopping all afternoon with her fellow housewives is fun, as is having her handsome husband, Jack, come home from a long day at work and service her on the dining room table before he’s even taken a bite of the roast and mashed potatoes. (We’ll come back to Harry Styles , and his many talents and challenges, in a bit.)

The revelation of what that something is, though, results in such a shrug of annoyance and disappointment that it very nearly ruins the entire experience in retrospect. I may have groaned audibly, “Ugh, really? That’s it?” at a recent press screening. Discovering what’s actually going on raises more questions than it answers, and it shines a harsh light on the half-baked notions in the script from Katie Silberman . She also wrote Wilde’s directorial debut, the delightfully raunchy comedy “ Booksmart ,” which had a focus and an emotional authenticity that are lacking in this thriller.

“Don’t Worry Darling” aims to explore the tyranny of the patriarchy, disguised as domestic bliss. This is not a new idea, but then again, there aren’t many new ideas here. You can see the various pieces being pulled together from better source material—a bit of “The Stepford Wives,” a whole lot of “Mad Men,” and a bunch of movies that would serve as spoilers to list them. Watching Pugh once again function as the clear-eyed voice of reason—and watching her get gaslit when she tries to warn everyone about the sinister undercurrents within a joyful setting—also brings to mind her visceral work in “ Midsommar ,” one of the key performances that signaled to the world she’s one of the finest young actresses of her generation. When will people finally learn to listen to Florence Pugh???

She is indeed a powerhouse, which makes it that much more glaringly obvious that Styles was not yet ready for this assignment. As an actor, he’s a terrific pop star. Granted, his character is meant to be empty and pretty, and he definitely looks the part with his slim suits and sleek, angular features. The camera loves him. But when it comes time for him to summon the emotional depth he needs for his more intense scenes opposite Pugh, he’s distractingly outmatched. (Interestingly, Shia LaBeouf was first cast in the role, but it’s hard to imagine him here as the earnest, young company man on the rise. His presence is too forceful, too unsettling.)

Styles’ appeal at least fits the premise of “Don’t Worry Darling,” in which a select group of forward-thinking families has moved to a planned Palm Springs community to create their own society in the mid-1950s. “It’s a different way. A better way,” Gemma Chan ’s glamorous Shelley assures her guests at one of the movie’s many soirees. Her husband is the town’s founder, Frank, and he’s played with the devious purr of a self-satisfied cult leader by Chris Pine .

Every day is the same, and that’s meant to be the allure. The men leave for work in the morning, lunchboxes in hand, on the way to top-secret jobs at the Victory Project, which they can’t discuss with their wives. The wives, meanwhile, send them off with a kiss before embarking on a day of vacuuming and bathtub scrubbing, then perhaps a dance class, and definitely some day drinking. Wilde herself plays Alice’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Bunny, with cat-eye makeup and a conspiratorial grin. She brings some enjoyable swagger and humor to this increasingly creepy world.

But little by little, Alice begins to question her reality. Her anxiety evolves from jittery paranoia to legitimate terror the more she discovers about this place, and Pugh makes it all palpable. Images come to her in impressionistic wisps and nightmares that startle her awake in the dark. In time, Wilde relies too heavily on these visuals: black-and-white clips of Busby Berkeley-style dancers, or close-ups of eyeballs. They grow repetitive and wearying rather than disturbing. The heavy-handed score from John Powell becomes more insistent and plodding, telling us how to feel at every turn. Whatever you’re thinking might be at play here, it’s probably more imaginative than what it turns out to be.

Once Alice finds the courage to confront Frank about her suspicions, though, it results in the film’s most powerful scene. Pugh and Pine verbally circle and jab at each other. Their chemistry crackles. Each is the other’s equal in terms of precision and technique. Finally, there’s real tension. More of this, please.

What’s ironic is that Frank and Shelley’s mantra for their worshipful citizens is one of control: the importance of keeping chaos at bay, of maintaining symmetry and unity, of living and working as one. But as “Don’t Worry Darling” reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that’s both dizzying and perplexing.

The craft on display is impeccable, though, from the gleaming cinematography from Matthew Libatique ( Darren Aronofsky ’s usual collaborator) to the flawless production design from Katie Byron to the to-die-for costumes from Arianne Phillips . The excellent work of all those behind-the-scenes folks and others at least makes “Don’t Worry Darling” consistently watchable, all the way up to its non-ending of an ending. Let’s just say you’ll have questions afterward, and those post-movie conversations will probably be more thoughtful and stimulating than the movie itself.

Now playing in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Don't Worry Darling (2022)

Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language.

123 minutes

Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers

Harry Styles as Jack Chambers

Chris Pine as Frank

Olivia Wilde as Bunny

Gemma Chan as Shelley

KiKi Layne as Margaret

Nick Kroll as Dean

Kate Berlant as Peg

Douglas Smith as Bill

Asif Ali as Peter

Olivia Wilde
Katie Silberman
Carey Van Dyke
Shane Van Dyke

Cinematographer

Matthew Libatique
Affonso Gonçalves
John Powell

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review: Burning Down the Dollhouse

Florence Pugh plays a seemingly happy housewife whose world starts to crack apart in Olivia Wilde’s wobbly feminist gothic.

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By Manohla Dargis

Soon into the candy-colored feminist gothic “Don’t Worry Darling,” the director Olivia Wilde tips her hand. The movie takes place in a desert town, Victory, where everything looks nice and pretty, including the midcentury homes at the end of a cul-de-sac. It’s a friendly neighborhood and, given that the story is set in the 1950s, more diverse than you’d expect. But Wilde lets you know straightaway that there’s something off here: Everything is too tidy, too uniform and too, too perfect, including the women’s smiles.

Shy, bold, coquettish or mocking, a woman’s smile is richly signifying, something that Wilde, an actress turned director, certainly knows. It can be a mystery, an invitation, a deflection; sometimes it’s a reward, although one that comes with a cost. “It is the Sleeping Beauty’s smile that crowns the efforts of Prince Charming,” as Simone de Beauvoir writes in “ The Second Sex ,” the captive princess’ gratitude validating the prince’s heroism. The men in the movie aren’t charming or heroic, yet the women smile constantly, stretching their lipsticked mouths so wide, it’s a wonder their faces don’t crack.

One does, though it takes an interminably long time for the fissures to become seismic. Something starts troubling Alice (Florence Pugh) soon after the movie opens. She lives on the cul-de-sac, and like the other wives, she waves goodbye to her husband, Jack (Harry Styles), as he drives off to work. At night, cocktail in hand, Alice greets him, an impeccably coifed and dressed present that he eagerly unwraps. Much of the rest of the time, she cleans their house, polishing and vacuuming and washing — the cinematography is suitably bright and crisp — to the sound of a mystery man’s droning voice.

It’s a good, intriguing setup. Everything has been buffed to gleam, including Wilde, who plays Bunny, one of Alice’s neighbors. But you quickly notice the lack of mess, and especially the relative absence of those agents of chaos, a.k.a. children. There’s a touch of Stepford to this happy, shiny place, and a dash of comedy in its excesses. But it’s obvious and blunt, and early on when the wives wave bye, all following similar choreography, I flashed on the evil planet in Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time,” where everything — houses, adults and kids bouncing balls — looks eerily near-identical.

Alice has clearly tumbled down a weird rabbit hole. But one problem with “Don’t Worry Darling” is that Wilde is so taken with the world that she’s meticulously created — with its colorful veneer, martini glasses and James Bond poster — that she can’t let it go. So, as Alice floats through her dream-life, Wilde shows off this dollhouse, taking the character to a country club, onto a trolley and to visit Jack’s charismatic boss, Frank (a silkily menacing Chris Pine), whose home looks like a bachelor’s pad out of an antique issue of Playboy, except that this one comes with a wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan).

Frank and his male employees’ extreme deference to him suggest there’s more to this world than its glossy exterior, as do some period-inappropriate details, like the topless woman walking poolside in public and Alice wearing only a man’s dress shirt outside her front door. But even as the dissonance builds and Alice grasps that something is amiss, the movie stalls. Alice becomes lost in thought, looks puzzled, hallucinates, looks less puzzled and so on as Wilde embraces a visual motif — the circle — that, after the second, third, fourth time she deploys it, loses its punch and usefulness, becoming an unintended metaphor for a movie that keeps returning to the same point.

Wilde does some fine work here, despite hammering the same notes early and often. (The screenplay is by Katie Silberman, one of the writers of “ Booksmart ,” Wilde’s more successful feature directing debut.) But she isn’t a strong enough filmmaker at this point to navigate around the story’s weaknesses, much less transcend them. That’s especially tough on the actors, who — with the exception of Pine — deliver one-dimensional performances that never hint at what might be churning inside their attractive heads. For her part, Pugh is too vibrant, too alive and just too vigorously full-bodied from the get-go for a role that calls for a slow-dawning awakening.

If Pugh’s performance never gets beneath the shiny, satirical surface, it’s because there’s no place for it or her to go. The movie’s take on gender roles is stinging, but its targets are amorphous (yes, agreed, sexism is bad) and carefully nonpartisan, and its take on the prison-house of the traditional feminine role — what Betty Friedan called the “happy housewife heroine” in her 1963 classic “ The Feminine Mystique ” — is shallow. Many cycles of feminist progress and sexist backlash have happened since that book hit, but, fairly or not, the current political climate and assaults on women’s rights demand more than a clever mash-up between “Mad Men” and “Get Out.”

Don’t Worry Darling Rated R for sex, language and violence. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic of The Times since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Don't Worry Darling Reviews

It is less than the sum of Florence Pugh's performance.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2023

Despite great chemistry between Pine and Pugh and amazing production & costume design, the obvious and nonsensical plot and Harry Styles' unconvincing performance ultimately sinks the film. Also: Why is this 2 hours long?!

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 23, 2023

There is a great film in the bones of the one we are presented with, one that is neater and more compact and doesn’t struggle with the internal logic it presents.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2023

An array of half-baked ideas that add up to nothing much more than a world of mirages.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 29, 2023

The ample running time clocks in at just over two hours, and there is no doubt that Don’t Worry Darling would be improved with at least 15 fewer minutes of the simmering dread...

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

Don't Worry Darling isn’t a bad psychological thriller. It merely crumbles under the weight of its own mediocrity.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

a puzzle box of a movie with an engaging premise that dives into themes of control. Florence Pugh is INCREDIBLE, Harry Styles holds his own, & Olivia Wilde really ups her game as a director here… but left wanting more from the film

If this was expected to be a groundbreaking comment on feminism, then it missed the mark by a long shot.

Don’t Worry Darling is ultimately a film about a woman who tries her best to free herself from a reality controlled by whiny, narcissistic men who’d rather take the easy way out than have a conversation and face their issues.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 25, 2023

There are worse movies than Don’t Worry Darling, and there are certainly better ones too. Some thrillers are better able to blend science fiction and shocking twists with dazzling imagery, and others manage to drop the ball more. Ultimately, it's fine.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Olivia Wilde's dystopian thriller is a lovely poison, meaning that while it's beautiful on the surface, it's disorienting and head-scratching underneath – mostly because of that twist.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 21, 2023

"Don't Worry Darling" has many imperfections, but it shows that Wilde can do more than indie comedies, and that she is willing to take on daunting projects.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2023

The plotting is completely incoherent and balanced atop a trembling tower of absurdities.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 17, 2023

Pugh, Styles, and Pine pour themselves into their roles... grinds to a halt in the third act when we get the presumed twist... it defies logic no one would take it farther. A captivating idea whose explanation rips you out of it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 28, 2022

DON’T WORRY DARLING is a poisoned fairy tale, and is a story of the reclamation of the self that is thrilling, beautiful, and thematically on the mark. It’s so on the mark, in fact, that it’s liable to make people angry, especially men.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2022

All the same, Wilde’s film has its wins, mostly in how sharp-eyed it manages to be about the violent insistence of conservative male fantasias.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2022

The set-up is so well handled that it’s aggravating when Wilde reveals the twist — which I won’t here, because of “spoilers” and because if I start lamenting where it goes wrong, I may never stop.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 11, 2022

[It's] a good-looking movie, and it has its moments, but overall, I felt like the "1950s-type-suburbia-are-hiding-something-sinister" theme was just too shopworn.

The script's structure (and Wilde's direction) is quite good. I just wish it was in service of having something more to say since its abruptness ultimately prevents it from having to say anything.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 9, 2022

Hollow and disappointing.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2022

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‘don’t worry darling’ review: florence pugh and harry styles can’t redeem olivia wilde’s stale reality-warp nightmare.

Chris Pine also stars in this mind-bending psycho-thriller (screening out of competition in Venice) set in an idyllic experimental community where Eisenhower-era values hide something sinister underneath.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles Sizzle in Olivia Wilde’s Neo-’50s Nightmare Thriller, but the Movie Is More Showy Than Convincing

The film's "Stepford Wives"-meets-"Handmaid's Tale" vision of a sunny, creepy retro cult community is better than its overly telegraphed and top-heavy conspiracy plot.

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Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling” is a movie that, in recent weeks, has been besieged and consumed by offscreen dramas, none of which I’ll recount here, except to note that when a film’s lead actress seems actively reluctant to publicize the film in question, that’s a sign of some serious discord. Yet it would be hugely unfair to allow this tempest in a teapot of gossipy turmoil to influence one’s feelings about the movie. If you want to talk about problems related to “Don’t Worry Darling,” you need look no further than at what’s onscreen.

Popular on Variety

And the women? They stay home, chatting and backbiting, cleaning house, looking after the kids, hanging out at the pool, preparing tuna salad and deviled eggs, taking ballet classes, and greeting their husbands after work with a drink at the door. You may survey it all and think: What fresh hell is this? But “Don’t Worry Darling” hasn’t even gotten to the sinister part yet. The name of this surreal retro subdivision is Victory, and the main thing everyone talks about is how wonderful it is. How lucky they are to be there, and how happy they are to have escaped the life they had before.

Our entry point into the Victory lifestyle is a childless couple who look singularly sexy, appealing, and in love: Jack, played by Styles with a wholesome cunning that marks him as a natural screen actor, and Alice, played by Florence Pugh, who holds down the center of the movie with a spark of eagerness that melts into a wary detective’s gaze. These two can hardly keep their hands off each other (early on, she clatters her dinner roast onto the floor, so that Harry’s Jack can go down on her — a scene that should sell $5 million worth of opening-weekend tickets right there), and there’s an affection to their interplay. But is it real? Is anything we’re seeing real?

The prefab community of Victory is run by a man named Frank, who also created it, and as played by Chris Pine he has the personality of a New Age cult leader — not a proto guru from the ’50s but one of those smiling fascists of self-actualization, the kind who can kill you with their sensitive positivity. And, of course, the reason for that is that they’re never sincere. They’re trying to get something out of you. They’re “open” about everything but their own agenda. Pine gives a delectable performance, but as soon as Alice and Jack join the other residents for a party at Frank’s oversize house, it’s clear something deeply troublesome is at play.

The characters in “Don’t Worry Darling” have a cult leader because they are, in essence, a cult: contempo folks who have formed a community in which they pretend to live like middle-class ’50s drones, and agree never to question anything and to do just what they’re told. Asking questions about what’s really going on, the way Alice starts to, is going to get you in trouble. If the film has a resonance, and bits and pieces of it do, it’s that we’re living in a world today that seems increasingly assembled out of cult psychology: the de facto cult leaders (like Trump), the tribal mindsets that dictate a rigid moral absolutism, the retro fetishization of 1950s values as a prime ideal.

Of course, when those other movies came out (even “The Stepford Wives,” which was never more than an amusing piece of claptrap), the world was a little less used to this kind of conspiratorial socio thriller. The early scenes of “Don’t Worry Darling” are the film’s best, but even there it’s hard not to notice the top-heaviness with which the movie telegraphs its own darkness. (It’s not like we watch Chris Pine’s speech and think, “What a good dude!”) To really work, the movie needed to reel us in slowly, to be insidious and creepy and surprising in the way that “Get Out” was. Instead, it’s ominous in an obvious way.

But it does have a big twist, which I will, of course, not reveal. I’ll just say that it’s a blend of “Squid Game” and Shyamalan, that it wants to spin your head but may leave you scratching it, and that it’s hooked to Harry Styles being cast, for one section, as a runty unattractive geek, which (surprise) is not exactly convincing. What is convincing is how easily Styles sheds his pop-star flamboyance, even as he retains his British accent and takes over one party scene by dancing as if he were in a ’40s musical. There’s actually something quite old-fashioned about Styles. With his popping eyes, floppy shock of hair, and saturnine suaveness, he recalls the young Frank Sinatra as an actor. It’s too early to tell where he’s going in movies, but if he wants to he could have a real run in them.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room (Venice Film Festival), Aug. 25, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 123 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema, Vertigo Entertainment production. Producers: Olivia Wilde, Katie Silberman, Miri Yoon, Roy Lee. Executive producers: Richard Brender, Daria Cercek, Catherine Hardwicke, Celia Khong, Alex G. Scott, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke.
Crew: Director: Olivia Wilde. Screenplay: Katie Silberman. Camera: Matthew Libatique. Editor: Affonso Gonçalves. Music: John Powell.
With: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll.

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Don't Worry Darling (I) (2022)

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Don’t Worry Darling Isn’t a Catastrophe—or an Unqualified Success

By Richard Lawson

Image may contain Human Person Clothing Apparel Finger and Harry Styles

Let us, if we can, put aside all the various mini-controversies that surrounded the lead up to the Venice premiere of Don’t Worry Darling . Now that the film has debuted, maybe we can just focus on the movie itself, which is neither triumph nor disaster. Director Olivia Wilde has made an obvious and intermittently entertaining sci-thriller, one that borrows heavily from many better things but uses those pilfered parts effectively enough. For a while, anyway.

The film takes place in what looks like 1960s Palm Springs, mid-century development ringed by threatening desert mountains. This is a planned community built by a shadowy corporation, one that has a vaguely messianic mission to advance humanity . . . somehow. The men, all handsome, go off to work each morning while the women, all pretty, look after the kids or soak themselves in afternoon cocktails with neighbor wives. (Or they do both.) It’s an arch blending of Mad Men chic (with a bright polish) and Manhattan Project secrecy. Of course, there is an ominous hum underlying all this sozzled good-living, the sense that nothing this perfectly secure and uniformly agreeable could be real.

We probably sense that because we’re familiar with The Stepford Wives , or The Truman Show , and other movies and television shows that present an outwardly pristine, if antiquated, design for living that ripples with sinister, unseen energy. Wilde’s film wears those influences plainly and without much re-styling. Still, the film looks good and is filled with peppery performances. In the lead is Florence Pugh , that great 20-something phenom who burst onto the scene a few years ago in Lady Macbeth and has since delivered one striking performance after another. If her cool scratch and mettle, in the form of housewife Alice, seem a bit out of place in this breezy world, that’s probably the point. She is meant to realize, as are we, that she doesn’t belong in this ordered place. Pugh sharply registers Alice’s mounting alarm, and she vibes well with the other wives, played by, among others, comedian Kate Berlant and Wilde herself.

And then there is the matter of Alice’s husband, Jack, who is played by little-known indie musician Harry Styles . I kid, of course. Styles is one of the biggest music acts on the planet at the moment, and this, his second film role, was once the buzziest thing about the movie. Seeing Styles on screen feels like something of an event, a sense of occasion that he rises to meet. Yes, there is some flatness when Styles gets to emoting, but he otherwise exists confidently within the picture. I don’t think he’s a Brando for the digital era or anything, but I would certainly be curious to see him in something else after this. (Like, say, My Policeman , which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival next weekend.)

Don’t Worry Darling glides along, its jumble of repurposed elements in lively enough harmony until it’s time to knuckle down and really get into what’s happening to Alice. It’s then that Katie Silberman , Carey Van Dyke , and Shane Van Dyke ’s screenplay begins to falter, as does Wilde’s direction. They show us essentially the same scene over and over again: Alice thinking she sees something unnerving only to be told, in gaslight-y terms, that she’s imagining things. She’s experiencing womanly hysteria, all the men in pressed white shirts and crisp suits who surround her insist. Wilde can’t figure out how to get the story out of this eddy; she stalls and repeats until it’s time to just go ahead and reveal what’s happening because the movie has to end at some point.

When that reveal comes, the film caves in. The intention here is to tell a pertinent story about women’s subjugation under the modern forces of anti-feminism, which has hardened online into a real-world aggressive sociopolitical ideology fueled by pseudo-intellectual public figures, red-pilled demagogues who have snaked their way into mainstream discourse—or, really, created their own mainstream. That’s certainly a salient topic for a film, but in Don’t Worry Darling ’s execution, Wilde offers no new insights. There are even some contradictory elements to the grand secret premise of the film, a muddled clash of faux-empowerment and Handmaid’s Tale debasement.

Not that we really have much time to think about these matters. Once the film starts showing its cards, it hurries to its climax and conclusion, complete with an unconvincing car chase and a murder. What energy the movie had has been sapped. It staggers across the finish line as it asks us to consider something profound, a great re-awakening that will lead to a mighty reckoning for the movie’s bad men. We don’t get to see that bit, though, because Don’t Worry Darling has used up all its tricks.

What remains consistent and undaunted throughout, though, is Pugh, a commanding and centered actor who makes the most of the hash she’s served. There’s a vivid scene in which Alice confronts the community’s shifty, sauntering overseer, played with a cult leader’s menacing appeal by Chris Pine . The two crackle well together, and in their shared moments the film briefly feels spiky and inventive. If only their chemistry was the foundation on which Don’t Worry Darling was built, instead of its stack of blurry copies of things done better elsewhere, years ago.

Richard Lawson

Chief critic.

By Matthew Jacobs

By Hillary Busis

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'Don't Worry Darling' and the mechanics of a mystery

Linda Holmes

Florence Pugh plays Alice in Don't Worry Darling . Warner Bros. Entertainment hide caption

Florence Pugh plays Alice in Don't Worry Darling .

It wouldn't take you long to list a whole series of occurrences that would persuade you that something was terribly wrong in your world. Say, a giant dog materializes in your living room. You break an egg, and it's full of ketchup. Your spouse fails to come home from a trip, but their suitcase is sitting on your doorstep. Something, obviously, is wrong. What would probably take longer is figuring out what would explain these things and make for a satisfying resolution to a story about them. Where did the giant dog come from? What happened to the egg? Where on earth is your spouse? The creation of a mystery is this two-step process: create the question, then create the answer.

The new film Don't Worry Darling is a drama and a thriller, but it's also a mystery. We meet Alice (Florence Pugh), who lives in an idyllic midcentury-styled neighborhood with her husband Jack (Harry Styles). This planned community is under the control of Jack's boss Frank (Chris Pine), who runs the mysterious Victory Project, which employs all the local men while their wives keep house. Alice begins to see clues that suggest that something is terribly wrong.

Some of these appear in the trailer: A roar sounds overhead — maybe like there's something military in the men's work. A plane falters in the sky. An egg turns out to be nothing but an empty shell that crumbles in Alice's hand. A woman stands on a roof in a nightgown. Alice finds herself crushed between the wall of her house and the window. She wraps plastic wrap around her own head. In the film, all of these visuals are quite effective in creating two of the most important elements of a mystery-thriller: true curiosity and deep unease.

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Finding menace in the conformity of this imagined suburbia of the 1950s and 1960s is hardly new. (The neighborhood reminded me instantly of Edward Scissorhands .) But director Olivia Wilde does find an effective visual language, particularly in the procession of classic cars that make an eerily synchronized exit from Alice and Jack's cul-de-sac every morning. And the use of period music, while sometimes oppressive, works in this context. She also gets a powerful performance from Pugh, who's rapidly becoming one of the most reliable film actresses we have.

As Pugh's Alice becomes more and more unnerved by her surroundings, the script calls on her to become more confrontational, and as the tension in her performance rises, that curiosity and that unease rise with it. The film holds this pose probably too long, playing with its contrast of the ominous and the aesthetically beautiful, including in the increasingly literal score (with its creepy, breathy "ha-ha-ha-ha" vocals). And then, eventually, as it must, it answers the question that lies at its heart, the way "whodunit?" lies at the heart of an Agatha Christie novel. Here, that question is just, "What is going on?"

That's where Don't Worry Darling falters. There's an effort to make the answer to the mystery — which I will not reveal, obviously — feel timely and relevant and even daring. That answer is a perfectly passable, if not terribly interesting, solution to the baffling situation Alice has been in. The problem is that the answer to the mystery's central question doesn't fit terribly well with the particular pieces of evidence it needs to explain.

I can tell you that, having seen the movie, I understand what the answer to Alice's foundational dread was, but I still don't know why the plane falters in the sky. I still don't entirely know why, specifically, that woman is on the roof. I'm not sure why Alice gets squashed between the wall and the window. To the degree the setup of Don't Worry Darling is "Something is terribly wrong," the film will eventually tell you what's wrong. What it doesn't do is explain why that terribly wrong situation is causing these particular terribly wrong details.

The mechanics of a good mystery are usually such that as the story builds tension, it's like the construction of a complicated lock on an ornate door. Every piece of new information creates another complication within the mechanism of the lock. Then, at some point, you are given a key. You put the key in the lock and you turn it, and there is a satisfying click as it disengages the lock and lets you in.

This structure is one of the reasons people praise, for instance, The Sixth Sense . When you learn the truth about what you're watching, the key fits into the lock perfectly. Or, to look at this from another angle entirely, consider Rian Johnson's well-received comic mystery Knives Out . Once you've seen it a few times, lots and lots of little details that were part of the family story and the twisty narrative are explained by all that you know by the time it ends.

The issue with Don't Worry Darling is that it creates a beautiful lock and a perfectly passable key, but when you put the key in the lock, it doesn't quite turn. You don't get that satisfying click. Watching the lock be built was still a pleasure; there's even still some relief of pressure in seeing what the key looks like. But the interplay between them isn't seamless the way it should be.

If this problem of a disconnect between the clues and the solution sounds familiar, it might be because it is the primary complaint of people who hated the (still controversial!) ending of the TV show Lost . Ultimately, there was an answer to what was going on (they were not in purgatory, they were not dead the whole time). But there was not a connection between the answer and many of the delicious crumbs that were dropped over the course of the series.

For me — and I think for some proportion of the rest of the Lost audience — the writers got away with it more than they didn't, because the ending of the series was emotionally true and compelling, even if it wasn't logically intact. As I wrote at the time : "The show, in the end, died as it lived: by offering effective character studies out of murky logistics."

Had Don't Worry Darling paid off in this way, emotionally and with a satisfying conclusion for Alice as a character, it might matter less that the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense if you sit with it for more than about 60 seconds. But partly because the movie hovers for so long in that very pleasurable and effective liminal space of tension-building and portent, it doesn't have much time to spend with its resolution, which seems rushed and leaves the distinct impression there are pieces missing that perhaps once offered more answers to specific questions about who does what to whom and why.

It's a shame, because there are some good performances here, including both Pugh and Pine (very believable as a dangerous boss), and there are some truly scary shots that work very well. But while too much explanation can doom a mystery as easily as too little, this is a case in which a little more explicit information about the workings of this neighborhood might have gone a long way.

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Don't Worry Darling review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles get lost in Shangri-La

Olivia Wilde's psychological thriller prizes midcentury style over sense.

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.

In a world that looks like a glossy palm-tree-dotted cross between Norman Rockwell and Mad Men , Alice and Jack (the impish, dimpled pop star Harry Styles ) are the envy of their friends, the kind of couple who can barely make it through a cocktail party or even breakfast without tearing each other's clothes off. They're well-off financially too, though the signifiers of their wealth — the impeccable wardrobe, the showcase home, the finned sedan gleaming in the driveway — match their neighbors' almost exactly; everyone's a winner here. That's because they're all part of some grand experiment called the Victory Project, helmed by a self-styled guru named Frank ( Chris Pine , a wolf in Rat Pack clothing) and predicated on some vague principle few residents seem willing to explain or even examine too closely, except that it involves the "development of progressive materials."

In this retrograde Shangri-La, it's every husband's duty to head off to Victory headquarters in those shiny cars and do whatever is they do, and the wives to be waiting at home when they're done with a highball and a smile. Nobody is allowed to venture outside town limits, but who has time for wandering when there's already so much to do? Prep the pot roast, scrub the bathtub spotless, take remedial ballet lessons or lay by the communal pool. Some, like Olivia Wilde 's imperious Bunny and Frank's glacial, gorgeous wife ( Eternals ' Gemma Chan ) are born for this gilded cage; others — particularly one increasingly desperate outlier ( If Beale Street Could Talk 's KiKi Layne) — can't seem to stop asking questions that no one, except maybe Alice, wants the answers to.

Wilde is also the director, and Darling is her darling: a polished candy-apple take on cracked utopia, encased in blinding Southern California sunlight and bright vintage pop ditties. At least some credit for the movie's distinctive look is due to veteran cinematographer Matthew Libatique ( Black Swan , A Star Is Born ), a frequent collaborator of Darren Aronofsky and Spike Lee who gives the film its fever-dream desert sheen. And spare some blame for the wobbling script, on which three writers share story credit; unlike Wilde's charmingly ramshackle 2019 debut Booksmart , the machinations here are more ambitiously outlined and story-driven, and as Darling goes along, the Edsel wheels, as it were, begin to come off.

The red flags in Victory surface early and often, like voles on a country-club lawn: not just Frank's purring low-grade malevolence or the prop plane that seems to fall out of a clear blue sky, but the jarring, jittery visions that surface like unwelcome late-night transmissions in Alice's mind. Pugh, the 26-year-old British actress whose fierce emotional intelligence belies her doll-like prettiness in films like Midsommar and Little Women (for which she received her first Oscar nod), gives Alice as much inner life as the skittering screenplay allows, and Styles, at least, looks fantastic in a suit. 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. Grade: B–

Don’t Worry Darling Is Neither As Good Nor As Bad As You Were Hoping

Arriving at the Venice Film Festival on a rapidly growing tidal wave of toxic buzz, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling is neither as bad as some are clearly hoping it will be nor as good as it probably needs to be to overcome the public-relations nightmare its press rollout has become. Hearing all the rumors of a troubled set and of actors falling out with the director, one might have expected a cacophonous, cobbled-together catastrophe. If only. The film is smooth, competent, (mostly) well acted, and merely tedious.

Set in a carefully manicured, mid-century suburban utopia placed smack in the middle of a desert, Darling explores the growing self-awareness of a young housewife, Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh), whose doting husband Jack (Harry Styles) sets off every morning with all the other men to a top-secret job where he works with what is referred to only as “progressive materials.” There are overtones here of the “ secret cities ” of the Manhattan Project, the prefab residential communities built by the U.S. military during the development of the atom bomb. The Chambers’ neighborhood is part of something called “the Victory Project,” where everything is cleanly coordinated and regimented, where men are men and women are women, where steaks and cocktails are waiting when hubby gets home, and where the characters are rewarded with lots of happy kids and/or great sex.

Clearly, something is deeply wrong here. The wives all wave their hands in unison at their husbands. The men drive off in gleaming, uniform, multicolored cars into the desert. The women go to dance classes where they are told, “There is beauty in control. There is grace in symmetry.” On the radio, the voice of Frank (Chris Pine), the Victory Project’s leader, offers forcefully stated bromides such as “You are worthy of the life you’ve chosen.” Later, he’ll talk about how the enemy of progress is chaos. At the Venice press conference for the film, Wilde and her cast talked about how despite the period trappings of the movie, it’s really about today. “The people we are playing were real people in a world very much our own,” Pine said. He didn’t need to say it. The movie isn’t exactly subtle on this point.

So where does a story like this go when it’s obvious right from the get-go there is something deeply twisted going on under its surfaces? Cinema has already given us two versions of The Stepford Wives as well as Suburbicon and Blue Velvet and Pleasantville and any number of other films about the corrosive underbelly of pleasant, old-fashioned domesticity. (There are several other reference points one could cite for Don’t Worry Darling , but they would constitute spoilers.) Movies about utopias that turn out to be dystopias either have to find a way to make their utopias initially compelling or get things rolling in such dramatic or deranged fashion that we can’t help but be riveted by the characters’ journeys of discovery.

Don’t Worry Darling , alas, does neither of these things. It merely asks us to watch as Alice slowly realizes that something creepy lurks within the Victory Project, and that can get boring and repetitive after a while. Our protagonist’s growing awareness comes via black-and-white visions of dancing girls as well as concern for her next-door neighbor and once-close friend, Margaret (KiKi Layne), whom we learn lost her son out in the desert and hasn’t been the same since. One day, while riding the Victory trolley that carries the wives to their daily appointments, Alice sees a plane falling from the sky behind a mountain. She tells the driver and wants to go help. “I don’t go that way,” he says tensely. “That’s not my route.” This might have been a shocking moment, but the community of Victory is so oppressively ordered and precise that it comes as little surprise to us. So we watch and bide our time as Alice expresses her shock, then sets off into the desert on her own. It’s never fun when the audience is so many steps ahead of the characters.

The movie, in its own way, functions like the town of Victory itself. As a director, Wilde has a good eye, and the film’s many scenes of regimented grace have a nice visual pop. In her directorial debut, Booksmart , she used the story’s episodic structure to experiment with style and toss ideas at the screen; the film made a virtue out of chaos. Don’t Worry Darling makes a virtue out of orderliness, but that can go only so far. We keep waiting for the movie to surprise us, to shock us. We keep waiting for the chaos.

Within this framework, Pugh does nervousness and terror well, and she makes Alice’s gathering anxiety as convincing as it can be even if the script fails to give her all that many interesting things to do. As Bunny, Alice’s close friend and the wise-cracking, cocktail-guzzling den mother to the clique of Victory wives, Wilde herself seems to be having a lot of fun. Pine makes for a uniquely charismatic protofascist cult leader; the film receives a welcome jolt of energy whenever he’s onscreen. The weak link, unfortunately, is Styles, who is not without talent but who fails to give Jack the dimensionality or inner conflict the character clearly needs, especially in light of where the movie ultimately goes.

About that: This sort of picture has been done enough times that, at this point, there are a few off-the-rack explanations for what might be happening. Our minds have been fucked enough times that the modern mindfuck movie has lost much of its power to surprise, especially when it announces from its opening frames that it will be a mindfuck movie. Ultimately, Don’t Worry Darling goes for a fairly familiar twist — a revelation that will likely have already flitted across many viewers’ minds as they watched the movie. But the explanation weirdly winds up being one of the strengths of the film because Wilde brings to it enough captivating grisliness that the twist effectively reframes most of what’s come before. In other words, it brings that bit of chaos the movie has been sorely missing. Is it enough? Probably not. But it’s not a total failure, either.

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Everything We Know

Everything we know about don't worry darling, we dig into all the details of olivia wilde's mysterious sophomore directorial effort starring florence pugh, harry styles, and chris pine..

TAGGED AS: Film , movies , psychological thriller , thriller

What is the Victory Project? If the characters in Olivia Wilde’ s upcoming psychological thriller were to ask about the truth behind this seemingly picture-perfect bit of 1950s American suburbia, the response they would likely get is the title of the film: “ Don’t Worry Darling .”

Luckily, we aren’t about to dismiss your questions about Wilde’s new movie ahead of its theatrical premiere this fall, so here’s everything we know about Don’t Worry Darling .

It’s Olivia Wilde’s Second Feature Film as Director

(Photo by Francois Duhamel/©Annapurna Pictures)

Olivia Wilde got her start as an actress, appearing on TV in the medical drama House and in films like Tron: Legacy , Cowboys & Aliens , and Drinking Buddies , but she’s demonstrated a real talent as a director, too. Her directorial debut, 2019’s female-focused high school buddy comedy Booksmart , was widely acclaimed. Don’t Worry Darling does not appear to be the heartfelt, feel-good romp that Booksmart was, though, and it will be interesting to see how Wilde handles this new genre. She has genre experience in her filmography, and she’s proved that she has the potential to be a great director.

When Wilde announced Don’t Worry Darling as her next project in August 2019, 18 different studios engaged in a bidding war, with New Line Cinema ultimately winning. Warner Bros. is distributing the film.

The Plot Feels Like The Truman Show Meets The Matrix Meets The Manhattan Project

Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine in Don't Worry Darling

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Unlike so many movies these days, Don’t Worry Darling is not a remake, nor is it based on any pre-existing book, comic, or other known property. The script that would eventually become Don’t Worry Darling was written by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke , and it earned a spot on 2019’s Black List — an annual round-up of acclaimed and buzzed-about screenplays that haven’t been produced yet. Katie Silberman , who wrote the screenplay for Booksmart , did a rewrite of the script and wrote the final screenplay.

Here is the official synopsis for Don’t Worry Darling :

“Alice and Jack are lucky to be living in Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in paradise?”

Olivia Wilde presenting Don't Worry Darling at CinemCon 2022

(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Speaking at CinemaCon in April 2022, Wilde gave some indication of what sort of vibe people could expect from the film. According to Variety, the story was inspired by movies like Inception , The Matrix , and The Truman Show .

“Imagine a life where you have everything you could want. Not just material, tangible things… like a beautiful house, perfect weather and gorgeous cars. But also the things that really matter, like true love or the perfect partner or real trusted friendships and a purpose that feels meaningful,” Wilde said at CinemaCon. “What would it take for you to give up that life, that perfect life. What are you really willing to sacrifice to do what’s right?” Wilde asked. “Are you willing to dismantle the system that’s designed to serve you?”

The first and, so far, only trailer for the movie premiered in early May. It’s an effective, eerie trailer that offers a good sense of what the vibe of the movie will be without spoiling too much in terms of plot. The swingin’ party at the beginning and the chic ‘50s aesthetics all look quite nice, but they soon give way to ominous threats, a sense of unease, and building action as it becomes clear that this is not just a normal period piece. Something is very, very wrong in Victory.

The Cast Features Big Names and Rising Stars

Florence Pugh ( Black Widow ) stars as Alice, the wife who seems to be asking too many questions about the Victory Project. Opposite her is Harry Styles , who is best known for the band One Direction but who has since made successful forays into acting, appearing in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and the post-credits sequence of Marvel’s Eternals . Styles plays Jack, Alice’s husband and an employee who works on the Victory Project.

In addition to directing, Wilde appears in the movie herself, playing Bunny, another one of the wives who live in Victory. Gemma Chan ( Eternals ), KiKi Layne ( The Old Guard ), and Kate Berlant , a comedian who has had small roles in movies like Sorry to Bother You and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood , also appear to be playing wives. Sydney Chandler, actress and daughter of Kyle Chandler, stars as well.

Chris Pine ( Wonder Woman ) plays Frank, who seems to be a higher-up at the company behind the Victory Project, and he menaces Alice at one point in the trailer. Nick Kroll ( Big Mouth ), Douglas Smith ( Big Love ), Ari’el Stachel ( The Band’s Visit ), Asif Ali, and Timothy Simons ( Veep ) also star.

Filming Wrapped in February 2021, But Was Delayed Due to COVID

Olivia Wilde and Chris Pine on the set of Don't Worry Darling

Filming for Don’t Worry Darling began in October 2020 and concluded in February of 2021. It was halted for two weeks in November when somebody on the set tested positive for COVID-19. In an Instagram post celebrating the end of filming, Pugh went to great lengths to praise everybody who worked on the movie for getting it made despite the ongoing pandemic.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLSE6F9F_vv/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=50556787-4d96-46d0-a5cb-20e64db4d3de

This Movie Is Why Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles Are Dating

(Photo by Neil Mockford/Getty Images)

Don’t Worry Darling is a notable movie for fans of celebrity gossip, because Olivia Wilde and leading man Harry Styles started dating after they met while making the movie. According to Us Weekly , the pair hit it off almost immediately and made the relationship public in January of last year. Wilde had previously been engaged to Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis , with whom she has two children, but they broke off their engagement in November 2020. Styles is reportedly not the cause of the split.

During Wilde’s presentation at CinemaCon, somebody got on the stage and handed her an envelope. It was later revealed that she had, in fact, been served child custody papers. Sudeikis said he was unaware the papers would be delivered like that.

Don’t Worry Darling opens in theaters everywhere on September 23, 2022.

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Review: Olivia Wilde’s scandal-ridden ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ isn’t good — or bad — enough

Florence Pugh as Alice in "Don't Worry Darling."

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In Olivia Wilde’s trouble-in-paradise thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” Florence Pugh plays a devoted housewife called Alice, a common enough name that here evokes a few famous antecedents. Watching her go about her daily routine — cooking every meal, cleaning the house from top to bottom and venturing into town for the occasional grocery run — you might be reminded of Alice Kramden. That’s true even if Pugh’s Alice seems to inhabit a brighter, comfier (if less funny) vision of 1950s domesticity than “The Honeymooners,” one that’s awash in Midcentury Modern splendor and sits at the end of a picture-perfect desert cul-de-sac. It helps that Alice has a husband, Jack (Harry Styles), who’s more or less the anti-Ralph, and not just because he thinks nothing of sweeping the dinner plates aside and treating his wife as a tabletop amuse-bouche.

After a while, though, you might be reminded of a very different Alice, the one who finds herself adrift in a strange, often sinister land where everything and everyone is a surreal imitation of life. And Pugh’s Alice, at first cheerfully accepting of the status quo, soon starts asking dangerous questions. Who exactly is Frank (a silky-smooth Chris Pine), the combination corporate boss, town mayor and cult leader who exerts such a hold on Alice and Jack and the other couples living in this sunbaked utopia? What is the nature of the Victory Project, the top-secret government enterprise that employs Jack and the other husbands on their block? The answers threaten to push Alice through the proverbial looking glass, whether she’s beholding a nightmarish vision in the mirror or cleaning a large window that suddenly closes in on her, underscoring her entrapment with an all-too-literal thud.

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And “Don’t Worry Darling,” for all its sinister undercurrents and feints at subversion, turns out to be a disappointingly heavy thud of a movie. Directed by Olivia Wilde and written by Katie Silberman (from a story credited to Silberman, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke), it’s a handsomely assembled, increasingly transparent thriller that stomps when it should creep and drags when it should accelerate. Mainly it reminds you of the many earlier, better pictures it consciously resembles; I’m loath to name too many of them and risk spoiling the story’s meager surprises. Suffice to say that Wilde and Silberman have conceived what often plays like a Palm Springs-shot derivation of “The Stepford Wives,” or perhaps an old Douglas Sirk melodrama by way of “The Truman Show.”

Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll and Chris Pine mingle with others outside in the movie "Don't Worry Darling."

For a gaslighting thriller about suburban malaise and retrograde gender politics, it’s not an unpromising setup. For a while, you’re held by the sheer weirdness of this isolated, master-planned community , and also by the bright-colored surfaces of Katie Byron’s Atomic Age production design. Day after day, Alice and her fellow wives exchange beaming smiles and go through their robotically synchronized rituals. Not that there aren’t differences between households: While Alice doesn’t have kids (yet), her best friend, Bunny (Wilde), has two young children, and another neighbor, Peg (Kate Berlant), is expecting.

Notably, too, not every resident of this community is white, which is one sign that this isn’t the typical Hollywood ’50s flashback. Among the exceptions are Frank’s wife, Shelley (a nicely chilled Gemma Chan); Peg’s husband, Pete (Asif Ali); and Margaret (KiKi Layne), a depressive insomniac whose violent unraveling provides an early clue that all is not well. Then again, “clue” might be too subtle a word. At a certain point — around the time Alice’s eyes fall on a secret folder labeled “SECURITY RISK” (because “PLOT TWIST INCOMING” would’ve been too obvious) — what’s meant to be creepily insinuating in “Don’t Worry Darling” turns laughably blunt.

Anyone who was rightly charmed by Wilde’s 2018 directing debut, “Booksmart,” with its furious pacing and whip-smart comedy, may be surprised by the peculiar leadenness of this sophomore slump. Again and again she falls back on derivative, unilluminating beats, as when the horrors of daily drudgery are conveyed by repeatedly smash-cutting to closeups of sizzling bacon and eggs. The director also leans too hard on a John Powell score whose moodily percussive singsong tends to overwhelm rather than deepen Alice’s mounting sense of dread.

A blond woman in an apron crushing eggshells in her hands in a kitchen

Wilde’s most arresting visual flourish is to reference the kaleidoscopic dance spectacles of Busby Berkeley, as Alice is repeatedly struck by black-and-white visions of 1930s-style showgirls dancing in circular formations. These vertiginous, fast-dissolving visions add to a growing sense of temporal dislocation; they also fuel the vibe of a male-orchestrated world where women exist to perform and be looked at. And so, in a pileup of hallucinations, vehicular accidents, menacing dinner parties and inevitable accusations of hysteria, “Don’t Worry Darling” becomes a retro-toned #MeToo liberation story, in which a woman gradually realizes the full extent of the nightmare she’s in and makes a desperate run for the exits.

It’s an intriguing story that becomes less and less interesting by the minute. That’s partly because the movie spends much too long on the buildup and partly because, for gender politics, he-said-she-said mystery and sheer narrative juice, “Don’t Worry Darling” has been more or less eclipsed by its own much-publicized production history. If you follow celebrity gossip and movie-biz headlines, you’ve probably read a thing or two about that history, particularly the behind-the-scenes imbroglios swirling around Wilde, her off-screen romance with Styles and the fact that Jack was originally meant to be played by Shia LaBeouf.

All the behind-the-scenes drama of ‘Don’t Worry Darling,’ explained

Few recent films have arrived with as much dramatic backstory as Olivia Wilde’s latest, starring Harry Styles and Florence Pugh. Here’s what to know.

Sept. 2, 2022

You may have also heard whispers of a beef between Wilde and Pugh, who has been conspicuously tight-lipped even as the movie’s fall rollout — officially launched at this week’s Venice International Film Festival premiere, where Pugh was absent from a promotional press conference — has slipped into damage-control mode. Does that make Pugh the living embodiment of her heroine, a much-abused woman quietly but determinedly eyeing the exits? (Her unsurprisingly empathetic on-screen performance makes a decent case.) Or could Alice in fact be a more fitting stand-in for Wilde, a talented director trying to fight her way out of a misogynistic system, one that wouldn’t blink twice at a male filmmaker in a similar position?

These are diverting but also depressing questions, and this is a review of a movie, not of a publicity campaign. If “Don’t Worry Darling’s” back story has become the year’s most appalling Hollywood train wreck, the movie itself, to some relief but also some disappointment, is nothing of the sort. Wilde’s failure here is primarily one of imagination. Her movie is competently acted, handsomely crafted and not half as disturbing as it wants to be. It’s nothing to worry about.

'Don't Worry Darling'

Rating: R, for sexuality, violent content and language Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes Playing: Starts Sept. 23 in general release

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Don't Worry Darling review

Style(s) over substance.

TechRadar Verdict

Beautifully realized and anchored by a typically compelling performance from Florence Pugh, Don’t Worry Darling looks every bit as polished as the sun-drenched town at the heart of its story. But by borrowing heavily from more successful films before it, director Olivia Wilde’s predictable tale of an unsettled housewife struggles to bring anything new to the table, recycling familiar tropes and banking on the gloss of its production design to keep audiences engaged. This is a movie that takes too long to show its hand and, ultimately, one that suffers because its central mystery just isn’t as interesting as it needs to be.

Florence Pugh and Chris Pine excel

Eye-popping production design

John Powell's electric score

Lacks originality

Twist comes too late

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Unless you’ve remained oblivious to the tabloid hysteria, you’ll know that Don’t Worry Darling has caused quite the social media stir in recent weeks. Not for anything much to do with the film itself, mind, but for the host of off-screen controversies that supposedly played out during and after its production.

Those dramatics – true or otherwise – warrant little more than a passing mention here, but they do bring into stark relief the comparably less interesting tensions that dominate Don’t Worry Darling’s on-screen story.

Director Olivia Wilde’s sophomore feature (after 2019’s excellent Booksmart) is far from a badly-made movie, but its technical merits aren’t enough to forgive its labored plot – nor the silliness that arises before the credits roll.

My kind of town

Florence Pugh and Harry Styles in Don't Worry Darling.

Set in the utopian Californian town of Victory in the 1950s, Don’t Worry Darling follows Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Harry Styles), a young couple living a picture-perfect existence in a small community of equally perfect families.

Their nights are filled with dancing, dinner parties and lustful endeavors, while the days see Jack and the rest of Victory’s husbands driving off to work at the mysterious Victory Project – an out-of-town development program led by Frank (Chris Pine), the founder of Victory.

Alice and the town’s other housewives are happy enough to cook, clean and socialize in the absence of their partners, with the understanding that they exercise discretion towards the Victory Project and the work it involves. But when strange occurrences begin to rock her daily routine, Alice launches an investigation into the true nature of her idyllic life.

So far, so intriguing – and the first thing to note is that production designer Katie Byron sells the movie’s setting and then some. Victory looks and feels like a lived-in luxury catalog; swimming pools sparkle, palm trees glisten and the town’s residents are so uniformly attractive that Marilyn Monroe wouldn’t draw a second look if she walked down the street.

The fictional town of Victory in Don't Worry Darling.

Wilde plays to the beauty of this set design whenever she can, often using the grandeur of the film’s desert surroundings – which aren’t too far removed from those in Jordan Peele’s Nope – as an effective contrast to the aggressively artificial town at its center.

The acting in Don’t Worry Darling is less consistently arresting. The elephant in the room concerns pop star-turned-actor Styles, who begins the movie convincingly enough before descending into drama-class-dramatics when emotions come to the boil in later scenes. He isn’t as awful as *that* promotional clip led many to believe, but don’t expect the musician to be adding an Oscar to his Grammy collection any time soon (sorry, Stylers).

The main reason Styles’ lack of professional training becomes so painfully obvious is Florence Pugh. Unfortunately, the Hollywood newcomer finds himself (literally) face-to-face with one of the best actors of this generation, and Pugh is never less than compelling as Alice. It’s easy to assume that Shia LaBeouf – who was originally cast as Jack, pre-controversy – would have fared far better than Styles opposite the Little Women star, but even a performer of his considerable talent may still have been made to appear the smaller of the two actors (despite Jack’s role as the supposed breadwinner).

The movie’s supporting cast – which includes Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll and Wilde herself – are credible enough, but only Chris Pine comes close to matching the nuances of Pugh’s performance. His character, Frank, is the most interesting of the bunch, and his brief interactions with Alice make for some of Don’t Worry Darling’s best scenes.

The long road to nowhere

The movie’s biggest problems, then, are not technical – nor are they performative, irrespective of Styles’ limited acting experience. Instead, Don’t Worry Darling suffers from a far more damaging drawback: a bad story.

We won’t go into details, in fear of spoiling the film’s biggest (and only) surprise – but know that the aforementioned synopsis stops short of a frantic final 30 minutes. In other words, the bulk of Don’t Worry Darling is dedicated to watching Alice notice things, question them, ignore them and repeat the cycle until she finally takes meaningful action. Yes, the movie’s title is a nod to the gaslighting of its female characters, and it makes sense that Alice is frequently made to feel paranoid – but we’re kept in the dark about Victory’s true nature for so long that, by the time the big reveal comes, our interest is all fizzled out.

And even if Don’t Worry Darling had revealed its secrets earlier on, the film’s twist is so unoriginal, so run-of-the-mill, that we’re left frustrated by Wilde’s unwillingness to try something bolder. Her movie borrows countless stylistic and thematic ideas from elsewhere while adding very little that other filmmakers haven’t already done before. Shades of Inception, The Matrix, Edward Scissorhands, The Truman Show and The Stepford Wives are all present here – which wouldn’t be a problem if Don’t Worry Darling made an effort to say anything interesting for itself.

Our verdict

Florence Pugh's Alice searches for answers in Don't Worry Darling.

In all, then, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling is a technically impressive movie whose value – like the fictional town it depicts – remains regrettably superficial. Florence Pugh shines, though not even her immeasurable talent can save this familiar fantasy from ending with a whimper.

Don’t Worry Darling is now playing exclusively in theaters worldwide.

Axel is TechRadar's UK-based Phones Editor, reporting on everything from the latest Apple developments to newest AI breakthroughs as part of the site's Mobile Computing vertical. Having previously written for publications including Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well-versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his coverage extends from general reporting and analysis to in-depth interviews and opinion. Axel studied for a degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick before joining TechRadar in 2020, where he then earned an NCTJ qualification as part of the company’s inaugural digital training scheme.

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Don’t Worry Darling review – panic! Harry Styles drama offers cause for concern

Styles’s accent is intentionally dodgy, but the rest of Olivia Wilde’s unconvincing tale of dystopian suburbia does not have the same excuse

F irst things first: it was unfair of everyone on Twitter to mock Harry Styles – on the basis of a single out-of-context online clip – for his wonky and unconvincing transatlantic accent in this film. There turns out to be a reason for it. Unfortunately, that reason is part of a larger wonkiness and unconvincingness in this handsomely designed but hammily acted, laborious and derivative mystery chiller. 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.

The setting is 1950s suburbia, or some disturbingly fabricated alt-reality version of 1950s suburbia, a glitchless picture-perfect place for a satire on conformity and patriarchy. This is a gleaming new housing development in the Californian desert, with state-of-the-art homes for families and upscale professional couples; there are retail stores and a swish country club for tennis and swimming. And everyone works for a single company with the faintly Orwellian name “Victory”, which is also the name of the town. The firm does top-secret work which employees are forbidden to discuss, and the locality is periodically disturbed by crockery-rattling mini-quakes which everyone has learned to ignore. The wives have swallowed their anxiety and thus have a glazed, affectless expression, like the Valium addicts of postwar America or those mannequins in the fake nuclear-test “doom towns” built by the US government in the Nevada desert.

Victory’s golden couple are Jack (Styles) and his stay-at-home wife Alice (Florence Pugh) who are apparently blissfully happy, loved up and living the American Dream. Jack is on the verge of serious promotion and they love hanging out with other Victory employees, such as the waspishly witty Bunny, played by Wilde herself. But the company chief Frank (Chris Pine) and his glacial wife Shelley (Gemma Chan) have the creepy assurance of cult leaders. There is a weird, anguished outburst from a depressed company wife at one of their claustrophobic parties, and Alice begins to suspect that something is very wrong.

Like Katharine Ross and Peter Masterson in Bryan Forbes’s The Stepford Wives from 1975, or Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tom Cruise in Sydney Pollack’s 1993 thriller The Firm, Jack and Alice are a couple who are at first thrilled by how great their lives are and do not suspect there is anything going on. They are seduced by the narcotic stupor of prosperity: the drinks, the food, the gleaming automobiles and the incessant jukebox slams of catchy music. But some occult evil can be glimpsed.

So far, so interesting … but where are we going with all this? The film feels it has to avoid the obvious reason for Victory’s existence and go down the rabbit hole after something else: so when the switch is finally flipped to give us the big secret, it feels absurdly negligible and contrived, and the details are not thought through. Styles may or not be a talented actor; it’s not easy to tell from this, but the normally excellent Pugh has not been interestingly directed, certainly not compared with her work in broadly comparable movies such as Midsommar or The Falling .

It is a movie marooned in a desert of unoriginality – and the desert doesn’t bloom.

Don’t Worry Darling screened at the Venice film festival , and will be released on 23 September in the US and UK.

All our reviews from Venice 2022

Horror films
Florence Pugh
Olivia Wilde
Harry Styles

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Don't worry darling, common sense media reviewers.

Stylish Harry Styles thriller has erotic scenes, drinking.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The main message takes the form of a question: Wha

Alice is a critical thinker whose curious mind is

Female-forward storytelling with women behind the

Knives used to cut or stab. Deep peril. Suicidal a

Extensive visual modeling of one character pleasur

"F--k" is said a couple of times.

Frequent drinking in a fun, party atmosphere. Ciga

Positive Messages

The main message takes the form of a question: What would you sacrifice to live "the perfect life"? And would you sacrifice "the perfect life" if you thought it was corrupt?

Positive Role Models

Alice is a critical thinker whose curious mind is unable to sweep things under the carpet. She's brave enough to speak truth to power, even if the personal cost is high. Jack is a loving husband, and he and Alice are a team, something that wasn't always the norm in the 1950s and '60s.

Diverse Representations

Female-forward storytelling with women behind the camera as well as in front. Sex-positive perspective. Most of the primary characters are White, but there are actors of color in the supporting cast, and the character who sets the plot into motion is Black; however, she's initially portrayed as being emotionally disturbed.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Knives used to cut or stab. Deep peril. Suicidal act shown in close up, with some blood. Blow to the head. A character has disturbing mental health "episodes."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Extensive visual modeling of one character pleasuring another sexually. No sensitive body parts are shown, but a man's head and hand are shown between a woman's legs in the two respective scenes, and she exhibits a strong orgasmic reaction. Burlesque dancing. Brief glimpse of the side of a breast. White cotton nightgown is somewhat see-through.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent drinking in a fun, party atmosphere. Cigarette smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that because heartthrob Harry Styles stars in Don't Worry Darling, a thriller directed by and costarring Olivia Wilde , his tween and teen fans may be interested. But the film's very Stepford Wives -esque premise -- in a seemingly idyllic suburban 1950s town, the husbands all work at a mysterious company, while their wives work at being "perfect" wives -- isn't meant for kids. The couples in the town socialize daily, guzzling drinks and smoking cigarettes while looking fabulous (this is the Vogue version of the mid-20th century). While they don't include any graphic nudity, sex scenes between a married couple are intensely erotic, with a husband pleasuring his wife from start to (enthusiastic) finish. A suicidal act is shown in close-up, and one character experiences disturbing mental health "episodes." Other violence includes stabbings and someone being struck with a blunt object. The middle finger and "f--k" is said a couple of times. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (19)
Kids say (27)

Based on 19 parent reviews

Really Excellent movie…NOT for teens or kids.

What's the story.

In DON'T WORRY DARLING, Alice ( Florence Pugh ) and Jack ( Harry Styles ) are a young married couple who are madly in love and living an idyllic life in a picturesque company town built in the desert. Like everyone who works at the Victory Project, Jack's work is top secret. But when Alice's friend Margaret ( KiKi Layne ) becomes disturbed by something she saw (or believes), Alice wonders whether life in Victory is truly as wonderful as it seems.

Is It Any Good?

Wistfully wonderful, Wilde's psychological thriller is mid-century marvelous -- so much so that it may work against its own purpose. Told from a female point of view, the film doesn't have a message so much as a driving question: What is the perfect life, and what would you sacrifice for it? When asked that, teens might have an instant reaction that's wrapped up in identity, independence, and a modern perspective. But Wilde's movie wraps up the patriarchal past inside a seductive package of pretty pencil dresses, poolside parties, and sisterly shopping sprees. Alice is enthusiastic about her life with Jack, and the wives of Victory embrace supporting their husbands through clean houses, delicious dinners, sexy morning goodbyes, and martinis after work. The allure of that lifestyle is necessary for the rest of the movie's plot to unwind, and while the idea of it isn't intact by the end, there may be more than a few younger viewers who are sold on the notion that being a housewife looks pretty great.

That aside, Don't Worry Darling is enthralling. Alice is a phenomenal character, and, as played by the talented Pugh, she has all the complexity of the female spirit. It doesn't seem coincidental that she shares her name with a famous literary character who's "curiouser and curiouser." When she sees a loose thread in the perfection of Victory, Alice just can't let it go. She knows she shouldn't pull on it, and she tries not to, knowing it may very well unravel everything she holds dear -- yet she must. Once she starts tugging, viewers fly into the spiral of confusion with her, and when her answers come, it's in the form of a shocker that will hold up in cinematic history. For parents focused on raising active, critical teen thinkers, this Alice is worth following into the rabbit hole.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether Don't Worry Darling is a feminist film. Why, or why not?

How did you feel about the "crazy" friend being Black, and the controlling wife being Asian? Does the movie's ending justify these problematic depictions of underrepresented communities? Why is positive representation important?

What do you think life was really like for women in the United States the 1950s and early '60s? How does that answer change depending on race and socioeconomic factors? How would you feel if you were expected to fall in line with the gender roles of the mid-20th century?

Why are secret societies a popular plot device in entertainment? What's the modern-day equivalent of a secret society, as pointed out by the film?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 23, 2022
On DVD or streaming : November 7, 2022
Cast : Harry Styles , Florence Pugh , Chris Pine , Olivia Wilde
Director : Olivia Wilde
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Female writers
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Thriller
Character Strengths : Curiosity
Run time : 122 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : sexuality, violent content and language
Last updated : April 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Don't Worry Darling and the 3 best Florence Pugh movies to watch (and 2 to skip)

W henever we see Florence Pugh on the screen, we already know that the film is going to include some of the best acting we've ever seen in our lives.

At just the young age of 28, Pugh has gone on to become a household name so great that the very best Hollywood directors always have a place for her in their films. She then takes those roles and brings them to life in a way that we seldom see. It's because of this that we truly believe that Florence Pugh is a movie star.

Pugh is only going to become more and more of a big name, so it's a good time to learn all about her best films and where you can stream them!

Florence Pugh's best movies

Don't worry darling.

Where to stream : Max

Although Don't Worry Darling was met with plenty of overwhelmingly negative reviews, we thought that the film was still really decent in terms of the acting and performances put on by everyone, especially Florence Pugh who starred as our protagonist, Alice Chambers.

In the 2022 film, Alice is a housewife who seemingly lives a perfect life. However, one day she starts to notice that things aren't always as perfect as she thought they were. Slowly, she starts unraveling the truth behind this society she thought had everything she wanted, and when she uncovers the truth she must escape before it's too late.

See all this and more in the official trailer for Don't Worry Darling here before streaming the film on Max.

Little Women (2018)

Where to stream: Starz

There have been many remakes of Little Women and every single one of the remakes is amazing in their own right. Even so, there's something so heartbreaking and beautiful about the 2018 installment featuring our girl Florence Pugh.

Pugh completely understood the complexity of Amy March, a character who is crazy in love with someone who is crazy in love with her sister. Amy had to decide whose feelings she would prioritize: her crush, Laurie, her older sister, Jo, or herself. No matter what she decided, though, she would hurt someone.

Although there were many remakes and may be many more to come, we believe that no one could ever portray Amy March better than Florence Pugh ever again.

Midsommar (2019)

Where to stream: Max

Undoubtedly, Midsommar is one of our favorite Florence Pugh films of all time!

Between the horror of watching her character, Dani, slowly descend into madness and the pleasantness of watching Dani finally find her community, there's not a doubt in our minds that Pugh took the script she was given and turned it into something so brilliant that only she could pull it off. What's more, Pugh seems to have understood this character extremely well and conveyed that through subtle facial expressions and body language.

All this to say, Pugh studies her characters very well and every time she does, it pays off for not only the audience but for herself as well.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Where to stream: Peacock

Oppenheimer is Florence Pugh's latest film. It's a movie that is currently sweeping at any and every award ceremony, as it was yet another Christopher Nolan masterpiece.

The film was so well-made and had such an incredible ensemble that it's looking very possible that it may take home the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year. Of course, we can thank Cillian Murphy for such an incredible display of talent. But Florence Pugh also shined as Jean Tatlock, a brilliant psychiatrist who Oppenheimer is drawn to once they meet.

Undoubtedly, Oppenheimer will propel Pugh to the next stage of her career and we can't wait to see what that looks like.

Florence Pugh movies to skip

Regardless of the movie, we believe that Florence Pugh's acting resume is a force to be reckoned with. Still, there are a few titles that aren't must-sees. Case in point, Black Widow .

Black Widow (2021)

Where to stream: Disney+

Black Widow was a movie released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it, unfortunately, didn't get as much of the attention that it should've received. However, reception and audience views aside, we just don't think Marvel movies capture a true movie star's talent.

Marvel movies tend to be very overproduced and sometimes, take away from the authenticity that comes with being present in the moment. Pugh was nice to see in the film, but it's easy to see how in some moments she did suffer from not being allowed to go deeper into the material.

By no means is Black Widow a bad film. We just think that there are many ways it could've been better for all involved, especially Florence Pugh.

A Good Person (2023)

Where to stream: MGM+

Like Black Widow , we have nothing against Zach Braff's film, A Good Person .

We think the 2023 film is a nice feel-good movie that will leave you feeling empowered to do something good for that one person who may be having a rough time in life or just a random stranger you see on the streets. Also, the film had none other than Morgan Freeman in it, which is a pretty impressive feat.

Even so, the movie, in our eyes, is just too easy to forget when you remember all of the stunning films Florence Pugh has been in and will be in.

For example, Dune: Part Two is another one of Pugh's latest films. Here, she shows us that she is even good at playing characters set in a sci-fi fantasy world. Here, she shows us that genre is nothing but a word to her. Here, she shows us that she is nothing other than a true movie star.

A Good Person is a nice watch after you finish watching all the films in Pugh's resume. But by no means is it a film you need to rush to see as soon as possible.

Maybe you'll feel differently about our list after giving all of Florence Pugh's titles a watch yourself. The only way to find out is by heading to the streaming platforms and seeing Pugh shine on your screen! Until then, we'll see you on the next Florence Pugh film we cover!

This article was originally published on hiddenremote.com as Don't Worry Darling and the 3 best Florence Pugh movies to watch (and 2 to skip) .

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Film Review: ‘Don’t Worry Darling’
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Don’t Worry Darling Review: Florence Pugh Carries Troubled Olivia Wilde
Don't Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde's latest is better than you think
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Don't Worry Darling (2022) Review

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Don't Worry Darling movie review (2022)
But as "Don't Worry Darling" reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that's both dizzying and perplexing. Advertisement. The craft on display is ...
Don't Worry Darling
The 57 Most Anticipated Movies of 2022 Weekend Box Office Results: Don't Worry Darling Scores Solid Opening Don't Worry Darling First Reviews: Florence Pugh's Stunning Performance Elevates ...
'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Burning Down the Dollhouse
Directed by Olivia Wilde. Drama, Mystery, Thriller. R. 2h 2m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Soon ...
Don't Worry Darling (2022)
Don't Worry Darling: Directed by Olivia Wilde. With Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde. While her husband leaves home everyday to work in a top secret facility, a young 1950s housewife begins to question her life when she notices strange behavior from the other wives in the neighborhood.
Don't Worry Darling
Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 28, 2022. Dolores Quintana Dolores Quintana. DON'T WORRY DARLING is a poisoned fairy tale, and is a story of the reclamation of the self that is thrilling ...
Don't Worry Darling First Reviews: Florence Pugh's Stunning Performance
Florence Pugh could land another Oscar nomination for her performance in Don't Worry Darling, if the movie as a whole isn't dismissed by audiences.From its Venice Film Festival premiere, the first reviews of the twisty, feminist sci-fi drama mostly highlight Pugh as its revelatory saving grace, or close enough.
'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Florence Pugh in Olivia Wilde Thriller
September 5, 2022 10:12am. Harry Styles and Florence Pugh in 'Don't Worry Darling' Courtesy of Venice Film Festival. Olivia Wilde 's second feature behind the camera, Don't Worry Darling, will ...
'Don't Worry Darling': Florence Pugh, Harry Styles in Retro Thriller
'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles Sizzle in Olivia Wilde's Neo-'50s Nightmare Thriller, but the Movie Is More Showy Than Convincing
Don't Worry Darling (2022)
Don't Worry Darling (2022) is a movie my wife and I saw in theatres last night. The storyline follows an isolated 1950s community where the men go to work and the women stay home and clean and cook every day. Jack and Alice are the next hot couple on the rise where Jack is rising within his employer and Alice is rising within the social classes ...
Don't Worry Darling Review
In Don't Worry Darling, pretty designs, inventive music, and capable performances hide an empty cinematic critique. Olivia Wilde's modern Stepford Wives is too literal and insubstantial to say ...
Don't Worry Darling Isn't a Catastrophe—or an Unqualified Success
Isn't a Catastrophe—or an Unqualified Success. Florence Pugh shines in an overly familiar work of speculative fiction. By Richard Lawson. September 5, 2022. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures ...
'Don't Worry Darling' and the mechanics of a mystery
'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde The thriller Don't Worry Darling has a satisfying setup and some good performances.But the payoff leaves a lot to be desired.
Don't Worry Darling review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles get lost
Florence Pugh in 'Don't Worry Darling'. Merrick Morton/Warner Bros. In this retrograde Shangri-La, it's every husband's duty to head off to Victory headquarters in those shiny cars and do whatever ...
Movie Review: Olivia Wilde's 'Don't Worry Darling'
Hearing all the rumors of a troubled set and of actors falling out with the director, one might have expected a cacophonous, cobbled-together catastrophe. If only. The film is smooth, competent ...
Don't Worry Darling
Don't Worry Darling - Metacritic. Summary Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) are lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. The 1950's societal optimism espoused by their CEO, Frank (Chris Pine)—equal parts ...
Everything We Know About Don't Worry Darling
The Plot Feels Like The Truman Show Meets The Matrix Meets The Manhattan Project (Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures) Unlike so many movies these days, Don't Worry Darling is not a remake, nor is it based on any pre-existing book, comic, or other known property. The script that would eventually become Don't Worry Darling was written by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke, and it earned a spot on ...
'Don't Worry Darling' review: Olivia Wilde scandals blunt thrills
By Justin Chang Film Critic. Sept. 5, 2022 10:15 AM PT. In Olivia Wilde's trouble-in-paradise thriller "Don't Worry Darling," Florence Pugh plays a devoted housewife called Alice, a common ...
Don't Worry Darling review
The acting in Don't Worry Darling is less consistently arresting. The elephant in the room concerns pop star-turned-actor Styles, who begins the movie convincingly enough before descending into ...
Don't Worry Darling review
It is a movie marooned in a desert of unoriginality - and the desert doesn't bloom. Don't Worry Darling screened at the Venice film festival , and will be released on 23 September in the US ...
Don't Worry Darling
Don't Worry Darling is a 2022 American psychological thriller film directed by Olivia Wilde from a screenplay by Katie Silberman, based on a spec script by Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke.The film stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine.The film follows a housewife living in an idyllic company town who begins to suspect a ...
'Don't Worry Darling' review: Florence Pugh isn't enough to redeem
The waves of off-screen drama and gossip surrounding "Don't Worry Darling" has put director Olivia Wilde's second movie in an awkward spot, unable to justify the hype (it's at best OK ...
Don't Worry Darling Movie Review
Parents need to know that because heartthrob Harry Styles stars in Don't Worry Darling, a thriller directed by and costarring Olivia Wilde, his tween and teen fans may be interested.But the film's very Stepford Wives-esque premise -- in a seemingly idyllic suburban 1950s town, the husbands all work at a mysterious company, while their wives work at being "perfect" wives -- isn't meant for kids.
Review: Is 'Don't Worry Darling' worth all the drama?
Reviews are based on the writer's informed/expert opinion. ... I would definitely rather re-watch "Don't Worry Darling" the movie than replay that media storm. But in some ways, the on ...
Don't Worry Darling and the 3 best Florence Pugh movies to watch ...
Don't Worry Darling. Where to stream: Max. Although Don't Worry Darling was met with plenty of overwhelmingly negative reviews, we thought that the film was still really decent in terms of the ...

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles Sizzle in Olivia Wilde’s Neo-’50s Nightmare Thriller, but the Movie Is More Showy Than Convincing

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Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room (Venice Film Festival), Aug. 25, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 123 MIN.

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The Plot Feels Like The Truman Show Meets The Matrix Meets The Manhattan Project

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