Strange Darling

Everyone’s got their pet peeves. My biggest movie one happens to be the use of chapters. Films are not books, so they should be able to tell a story in a cinematic way, visually and sonically. Movie chapters always struck me as gimmicky distractions—until Strange Darling came along. First off, the film announces right out of the gate that it’s “A Thriller in 6 Chapters,” so we don’t need to waste any time wondering how many to expect; then it surprises us by boldly playing them out of order. Beginning with Chapter 3 already kind of knowingly says: chapters are silly, so let’s have a little fun with them. Also gimmicky, perhaps, but the film’s disjointed nature proves essential to the exhilarating experience of watching it, keeping viewers on edge and the timeline manageable, while also seriously messing with perceptions.

The raw immediacy of the opening is truly unsettling as we are thrown right into the fray of a woman being hunted by a man. These two characters—who are given no names, only credited as “The Lady” and “The Demon”—are engaged in an aggressive chase that starts in cars and continues on foot in the woods. Our protective brains instinctively side with this terrified victim, so shaken and sporting a bloody ear—which looks kind of like Trump’s “bullet wound” should have—over the vicious assailant trailing her, shotgun in hand. This intense pursuit carries on for two chapters before we are allowed to breathe (if only momentarily), as we flash back to the pair’s first meeting, which turns into an evening of dangerous sexual role-play. The actors (Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner) have electric chemistry, and their interactions are flirty, tender, savage, and wholly unpredictable.

Writer/director JT Mollner’s raw and stylish second feature—a vast improvement over his first, the ultraviolent 2016 Western Outlaws and Angels, which also attempted to tackle brutal gender politics—gets powerhouse performances from its two leads, with Fitzgerald especially impressive. She maneuvers through an insane range of emotions like a champ, and her name should have appeared right alongside Demi Moore’s during this year’s awards season. Following her and Mollner’s nasty journey through Strange Darling’s hellscape is thrilling and relentlessly stressful, except for the one very welcome and totally absurd scene of comic relief involving the highest-calorie breakfast sandwich ever captured on film (yeah, the movie was proudly and quite brilliantly shot on 35mm—by the actor Giovanni Ribisi, in his feature debut as a DP; he also co-produced). It’s an amazing last meal to be shared by an adorable old couple: doomsdayers living in the woods, played by Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr., who couldn’t have expected the end would actually come from crossing paths with these two strangers. 🩸