Movie Review: Don't Worry Darling (2022) #SPOILERS#

October 2, 2022

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

6/10

What do you get when you cross the Stepford Wives with the Matrix and Truman Show? Basically this movie which takes place in a town called Victory set in a 1950s era idyllic suburbia where all of the wives stay home and tend the home while their husbands go off to work at their important jobs each day. The community is led by a hypnotic cult leader named Frank (Chris Pine) who reminds the residents of how good they have it while stressing the importance of the work the men do for a mission to achieve some undefined victory in the world and centers around the couple of Jack (Harry Styles) and Alice (Florence Pugh). Bunny (Olivia Wilde) is basically the alpha female who cavorts around the town and it's mini resorts with her own clique of lady followers. Of course something like this sort of life must have a sinister underbelly which will be exposed during the course of the film and the first hint happens when another wife named Margaret (Kiki Layne) seemingly seems to lose sanity.

Alice senses that Margaret's ravings may not be so out of line with something that she's felt for awhile and the first break happens while riding the town bus when she sees a plane crash over a ridge. From there she walks on foot to find the crash site only to stumble upon Victory headquarters at the top of a large hill. When she touches the glass on the entrance door she experiences weird visions of another world that is not as posh as the one she's living in and this begins a downward spiral to find the truth of Victory and the company that employs her husband. Her husband is promoted in his job and everything starts coming to a head at his celebratory dinner where Alice confronts Frank about what's really going on in the suburb and more details about Margaret's apparent "mental break" are revealed. Eventually she awakens from this 1950s era matrix only to realize that she has a tiring job as an ER nurse and Jack sits in their crappy apartment all day living out a miserable marriage with peasant food and no affection. He signs up for the Victory project, straps Alice to the bed, and puts on the required head gear for them to enter this virtual hypnotic world (in a flashback) where his life and marriage are much better.

Of course, Alice never consented to this and is angered to find out that she's been living a sham life despite Jack's reasons for doing so. In the end she accidentally kills Jack in an argument over whether staying there is right and Bunny appears to tell her that any man killed in Victory also dies in the real world which means that her husband is dead. She advises Alice to get to Victory HQ as fast as she can to exit it because men in the real world will be dispatched to kill her physical body in order to maintain secrecy. She does manage to escape by touching the glass and the movie ends here but it didn't offer a resolution because we already know that she's strapped to the bed and won't able to get away before the Victory employees come to her drab apartment.

The movie annoyed me on many levels not the least of which is Frank's constant hypnosis inducing voiceovers and the imagery of dancers always arranged to mirror the eye's iris which also is part of the program's visuals used to bring you under. To me it also seemed to have a feminist bent where women should choose a less happy life where they work instead of a more luxurious life where the men handle labor and let them have a more relaxing time tending the home and meeting for their girl activities. That could be debated however you see fit but the Alice character complains that she works long shifts at the hospital and when she gets home she's too tired for affection with Jack and the food they eat is not as well prepared as that in the Victory world. When Jack leaves the home to go to work each day we find out that he's actually exiting the Victory matrix to go to work in the real world at a menial job he hates just to pay for their apartment, food, and the ability to escape back into the virtual world which is the only thing he's living for. It's a mixed message between the wills of Jack and Alice and which way to live is right. Should we live a more honest life in austere misery or deceive ourselves with the false trappings of an invented world? You decide for yourself but it just didn't hit for me.