Strange darling2024.
Directed by: JT Mollner.
Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Jason Patric, Giovanni Ribisi, Ed Begley Jr., Barbara Hershey, Steven Michael Quezada, Madisen Beaty, Denise Grayson, Eugenia Kuzmina, Bianca A. Santos, Sheri Foster, Duke Mollner, Andrew John Segal and Robert Craighead.
SUMMARY:
Nothing is as it seems when a crazy one-night stand turns into a serial killer’s brutal series of murders.
Strange darling begins by throwing the viewer into its non-linear structure by showing Willa Fitzgerald’s The Lady wounded and on the run from Kyle Gallner’s Devil. The latter moniker feels like cheating once director JT Mollner reveals the game being played here. The “everything is not as it seems” aspect also walks the line between frustratingly obvious and a clever diversion here and there (a lack of crucial information in the opening credits is an example of a more sophisticated method of misdirection that feels fairer to the viewer.)
There’s also no denying that, regardless of what’s going on between them, these characters are embodied with a ferocious intensity that is all-consuming in a gleefully sloppy sense. However, the entire narrative is also hollow in that it doesn’t grapple with the psychology of it all, which means things also drift into an increasingly bitter third act that potentially sets a dangerous precedent. The problem isn’t what Strange darling does, because realistically everyone is capable of monstrous behavior, but rather how and why one chose an ugly core message.
It is virtually impossible to check Strange darling without at least discussing its subversive concept, a dynamic that reveals in the first act that the Lady is, well, a queer woman who agreed to a wild night of sex in a motel with this mustachioed stranger. The idea is that everything you see before in Chapters 3 and 5 is either the result of a disastrous night that brought out a violent monster in this man, or a crazy continuation of the role-playing scene in Chapter 1. However, it can be argued that the film doesn’t hide what it’s doing all that well.
In real time, the more I write about Strange darlingthe more I want to give it away; it’s such an exercise in meaninglessness. It’s a film built on twists and turns and the hope that the viewer can’t handle the idea of what any of these characters are and what they do. Then it morphs into something uglier about how we respond to horrific situations in modern times. Yes, this film is about a real serial killer; some of it did happen. No, that’s not to say it’s presented here in a way that doesn’t come across as anything but pointless and exploitative true-crime garbage seemingly designed to make someone think twice the next time they’re confronted with a similar situation on the news or elsewhere.
That is not to say that society’s willingness to jump to conclusions without having credible evidence or information is wrong, but this film only deals with cat-and-mouse violence that has shock value. And yet it would be a lie and hypocritical of me to say that Strange darlingwith its explosive performances and Giovanni Ribisi’s sleek and neon-drenched 35mm cinematography and back-and-forth, lurid power shifts, failed to win me over. Not to mention that it’s no small feat to elicit such a visceral response, as it almost certainly will in any viewer.
Assessment of the flickering myth – Film: ★ ★ / Cinema: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the reviews editor at Flickering Myth. Find new reviews here, follow my Þjórsárdalur or Letterboxd, or email me at [email protected]
