DON'T WORRY DARLING: 4K Blu-ray (Warner Bros./New Line/Vertigo, 2022) Warner Home Video

I am not entirely certain what to make of director, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling (2022), a convoluted mishmash to have its aegis, if not its inspiration in a sort of butchered Stepford Wives (1975) scenario about superficially ‘perfect’ man-made utopias that, inevitably, turn out to be anything but. Wilde’s flick had potential – much of it almost immediately squandered on a weirdly unsettling premise that ‘perfection’ comes at a cost, and decidedly human sacrifice for those who refuse to unquestioningly accept its precepts on the ‘say so’ of its omnipotent puppet master (herein, ineffectively played with sleezy aplomb and a streak of God-like mental illness by Chris Pine). Pointless and plodding, after initially setting up the premise that something definitely does not pass the proverbial ‘smell test’ in Pleasantville, USA, Don’t Worry, Darling slides down a very bleak and confusing rabbit hole of half-baked ‘what ifs?’ and ‘oh, no’s’ that go absolutely nowhere fast. I wanted to be immersed into this pseudo-psychological thriller, but steadily found myself wishing I had stayed at home to re-watch 2005’s The Island instead.

Don’t Worry, Darling tanks on its own desperate indifference to be brilliant, introducing us to the ‘Victory Project’ without actually clarifying for the audience its modus operandi and why it should suddenly make the hypnotically accepting dolts in this escapist enclave go mad with dead-end queries to know more. In hindsight, the production was fraught with challenges. It entered into a bidding war in 2019, after a spec script by Carey and Shane Van Dyke went viral. But then, Katie Silberman was brought in to completely rewrite the story with Wilde suggesting Pine’s character, the pseudo/psycho-intellectual, Frank be based on psychologist and author, Jordan Peterson. By April 2020, Florence Pugh, Shia LaBeouf and Chris Pine had all signed on to partake, with Dakota Johnson joining shortly thereafter. At first, Wilde cast herself as Alice Chambers (the role eventually going to Pugh) with Harry Styles replacing LaBeouf as her workaholic hubby, Jack; LeBeouf, depending on the source being consulted, either suffering from a prima donna complex, exhibiting hostile behavior towards his director and co-stars, or willingly departing before it could get underway. KiKi Layne replaced Johnson, due to contractual conflicts, as the ill-fated neighbor, Margaret Watkins, with the rest of the cast, to include Sydney Chandler, Nick Kroll, Douglas Smith, Kate Berlant, Asif Ali, Timothy Simons and Ari'el Stachel finally in place.

It's oft said that in Hollywood, bad press is preferred to no press at all. This might explain some of the stories swirling around this movie’s production. Wilde and Pugh supposedly engaged in daily screaming matches on the set, forcing Warner Bros. exec’, Toby Emmerich into the role of a lion tamer to negotiate a truce. The negotiations eventually ironed out the kinks regarding the film’s press and promotion, with Pugh abstaining from the New York premiere. A story also has circulated, Harry Styles spit on co-star, Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival. Pine’s PR wrangler has denounced this one as a nasty rumor. Whatever the truth, none of it actually helped Don’t Worry, Darling ascend to greatness in the minds of critics. It is not all that difficult to reason why the picture remains in a suspended limbo of its own design. The finished screenplay deprives us of any meaningful character development, wasting far too much time in exploring the oversexed lifestyle of its central protagonist, Alice Chambers, who enjoys repeatedly being splayed and savaged by her horndog of a hubby in between scenes involving some superficial gossip sessions with the other ladies who lunch or attending their group rhythmic dance class to blow off steam.

Set in a non-descript, pseudo-50’s desert paradise, Don’t Worry, Darling introduces us to Alice and Jack Chambers – a young couple who enjoy their passionate rendezvous without any desire to start a family.  Every day, Jack and the rest of the men living in Victory take their vintage automobiles for a spirited race through the desert outskirts, converging on the Headquarters while their trophy wives frolic and clean, relax together poolside or at a fashion show, and return just before the dinner hour to prepare nutritious meals for their husbands. The wives are politely discouraged to question what their husbands do all day long. But Margaret disobeyed this rule, taking her son into the desert where, presumably, he died.  At a company gathering, Margaret suggests Victory took her son to punish her for her curiosity. She also tries to forewarn the other ladies that their entire life’s work is a colossal lie. Margaret's nervous husband, Peter (Asif Ali) attempts to ply her with a medication administered by the nefarious Dr. Collins (Timothy Simons). Alice’s own naïve curiosity enters the ‘creep factor’ a few scenes later when she witnesses Frank observing her and Jack having sex.

The next morning, while riding the town trolley, Alice sees a plane resembling the favorite toy of Margaret's son, crash beyond a mountain range. Incensed at the driver’s (Steve Berg) nervous refusal to drive to the spot for survivors, Alice sprints the considerable distance in her heels, arriving at Victory’s mountaintop headquarters with no wreck in sight. After placing her hands on the reflective glass of the building, Alice begins to suffer from surreal hallucinations. The walls in her home close in. There are also a few ghoulish inserts of distorted faces glaring back at her from a dreamlike world just beyond her known reality. Disturbed by what she cannot understand, Alice is further stirred when she receives a phone call from Margaret, who claims to also be suffering from these phantasms. Repulsed by the call, Alice witnesses Margaret commit suicide by slitting her own throat before dramatically toppling from the roof of her house. A frantic Alice races to the scene, prevented from reaching Margaret's body by men wearing red jumpsuits. Regaling Jack with what she has seen, he instead suggests Margaret fell, but is recovering in hospital, a tale collaborated by Dr. Collins, who attempts to prescribe a sedative for Alice.  

Increasingly distrustful and perplexed, Alice is plagued by Margaret’s death, and becomes quietly disturbed when, at a Victory gala, Jack is awarded a promotion by Frank. To celebrate, Jack engages in a bizarre dance, his mechanical movements inferring his body is being manipulated at Frank’s behest. Sickened by this display and retreating to the bathroom, Alice is, at first comforted by her best friend, Bunny (Olivia Wilde). But when Alice confides what she has seen, Bunny flies into a rage and accuses Alice of being selfish. The next evening, Alice and Jack host a neighborhood dinner party, inviting Frank and his wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan). At first, it appears as though Alice will comply with Jack’s request to remain silent. But then, Frank privately confronts Alice in the kitchen, confirming her suspicions, while hoping she will continue to challenge him. In reply, Alice openly confronts Frank as the rest of the guests look on in horror. Frank gaslights Alice, inferring she is delusional. The guests depart and Alice begs Jack to leave Victory. Jack agrees. But when Alice gets in the car, she realizes he has betrayed her as the men in red jumpsuits return to restrain her. Dr. Collins submits Alice to electroshock therapy, causing her to sees visions of herself working as an emergency room nurse and and living with an unemployed Jack in a dingy duplex.

Alice returns to Victory, presumably cured, and is reunited with her husband. Alas, her therapy has afforded Alice new clarity about the Victory Project – it is a simulated world created by Frank. When Jack realizes Alice knows the truth, he tries to explain he sacrificed her to the project for her own good. Enraged, Alice tells Jack he took away her autonomy. The couple struggle and Alice ends up murdering Jack. A repentant Bunny tells Alice she has always known Victory was a simulation, but chose it to be with her children who actually died in real life. Bunny orders Alice to flee to Headquarters, the only exit portal from this simulation. Simultaneously, the rest of the wives realize something is wrong as their husbands begin to panic. Alice peels away in Jack's car toward Headquarters, pursued by Dr. Collins and the men in the red jumpsuits. At their house, Shelley, desperate to regain her own control, murders Frank with a knife from the kitchen. Alice reaches Headquarters and rushes to press herself against its reflective glass as the men in the red jumpsuits descend upon her. The screen goes black and Alice is heard gasping for air.

Don’t Worry, Darling is such a claptrap of half-baked ideas it fails to enthrall or disturb as it should, its faux-Matrix plot wrapped in the enigma of a ‘better world’ carved from the ultra-conservative fifties gone mad. There is not enough of a threat here, chiefly because the tale’s all-powerful manipulator, Frank is barely glimpsed, much less heard conspiring to control an imaginary world hewn from his own design. The gradual unraveling of this secret – that Victory only exists so long as the pre-programmed mind is willing to believe in it – is neither as terrifying nor as shocking – just weirdly conceived as veiled hints something is not truthful about this sun-filtered/fun-frolicking lifestyle Alice and her cohorts have been imagining under Frank’s auspices. None of the characters, except Pugh’s Alice are as investigated or afforded any sort of characterization to make us care about what happens to them.

It is difficult, if not entirely impossible to become invested in the lives of Margaret, Bunny or anyone else. The conspiracy to keep Victory a secret from Alice, the one person questioning its precepts, is presented with nonchalant, if mildly sinister encouragement she should eventually unearth the truth. But Frank is not God-like in his pursuit of this immaculate ruse. Rather, he is antiseptically perverse, lurching from the shadows to observe his creations screwing like animals or leaning into Alice with whispered threats to test the merits of her resolve to defy him and his perfect world. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is exquisite, toggling between sun-filled desert landscapes and the pastel pastiche of idolized fifties’ contemporary society inside its palm-treed oasis, and monochromatically designed geometric configurations a la Busby Berkeley, herein meant to infer something inherently dangerous and evil about such kaleidoscopically realized symmetry. In the end, alas, it comes to not and Don’t Worry, Darling becomes an homage to a past imperfect that never really existed, except perhaps at the movies, and even then, in better incarnations than the one being presented for us here.

Don’t Worry, Darling arrives on 4K UHD Blu-ray in a stunningly handsome transfer.  The image is consistently crisp with a splashy spectrum of colors, exceptional clarity and refined details with superb contrast and solid depth of field – everything you would expect from a native 4K presentation derived from a 4K digital intermediate. Flesh tones appear natural and consistent. We get a Dolby Atmos and 5.1 DTS soundtrack. Naturally, the Atmos is the way to go, deeply immersive with subtly nuanced effects and John Powell’s score creating an ominous ambience (far more than the actual storytelling deserves).  The few opportunities for this track to really open up (eg. the car chase) rock the subwoofer with earth-jangling clarity. The 4K disc offers no extras. But the accompanying Blu-ray has a brief ‘making of’ running just under 20 minutes and barely a minute of Alice’s deleted nightmare scene.  Bottom line: I would have sincerely wished for a better movie here, certainly a far more compelling one. But like the Frankenstein monster, this one has been stitched together from storylines and plot elements better resolved elsewhere. Recommended for transfer. Not recommended for content. Don't waste your time, darling! Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

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