'Don't Worry Darling' movie review: Florence Pugh-starrer is an entertaining, flawed thriller

For a film that hogged headlines more for its off-screen drama than the actual plot, itis a perfectly fine film. It is, however, a tremendous downgrade for director-actor Olivia Wilde, whose 'Booksmart' was one of the best comedies of 2019 -- witty and original. Original is a word one would not use for 'Don't Worry Darling'. Florence Pugh and Harry Styles play Alice and Jack Chambers, a couple in 1950s America's sunny somewhere. They live in a small company town, where the wives clean and cook for their husbands, who go to work in the secretive Victory Project. Oh, and the women have to follow strict rules like not crossing certain geographical limits and not being too curious about their husbands' work. It's the '50s, all right.

The film opens with a boozy party involving Alice and Jack and their few friends, all couples, who live in adjacent suburban dwellings at a cul-de-sac. The setup is meant to show how pleasant Alice's life is, how lovely in a storybook way. Her husband loves her, pays heed to her sexual needs (Wilde boasted that the film favours female sexual pleasure, and there is some truth to that), and surroundings are quiet and relaxing.

But there are cracks in her ideal, perfect world. She realises something is awry when her friend Margaret (KiKi Layne) begins to give her warnings that are too vague and appear rambling, which the town doctor calmly attributes to mental illness. Alice herself begins to embark on the same journey when, among other things, she spots an aircraft falling out of the sky, and is successfully convinced by the said doctor and her husband that it was all but a dream. Chris Pine's magnetic and mysterious Frank, who runs the whole show, watches Alice from the sidelines, as though daring to expose him.

Like the Alice of that Lewis Carroll fairy tale, our Alice has to break free of her shackles and wake up as well.

As you have probably guessed, the town, called the Victory Town, in 'Don't Worry Darling' has an air of dystopia. The story is 'Stepford Wives' meshed with a lot of 'Get Out', a bit of 'The Truman Show', echoes of George Orwell's '1984', and a couple more inspirations that I refrain to mention for they would spoil the big reveal of the film.

But most of all, the script, written by Katie Silberman (she also co-wrote 'Booksmart'), is a nod to the MeToo movement. Characters in the film do not utter some of the related buzzwords like 'gaslighting', but they are all there, and 'Don't Worry Darling' is not subtle about them. It is, in fact, not subtle about anything. It wears its influences on its sleeve, in perhaps an attempt to avoid any criticism over unoriginality.

'Don't Worry Darling' introduces several interesting ideas but it is not able to truly flesh any of them. There are several scenes throughout the movie that seem to hint at something but are left undeveloped and unexplored. I bet a lot of the footage of this film was left on the cutting room floor. Margaret is the biggest loser here as a character. She is reduced to a subhuman, whose only task is to call our heroine's attention to the nature of her reality. She is not even a supporting character, she is barely a character.

Also, the film does not have anything new or interesting to say about its throughline -- if there is one in this mess -- at all. It advances themes -- men prefer submissive women, want women to be housewives who clean and cook for them, and so on -- that have been done numerous times, in usually better films.

But 'Don't Worry Darling' is a pretty decent thriller. There is enough entertainment value to satisfy most casual moviegoers. The strikingly good-looking and talented cast lives up to the reputations. Pugh is fantastic, and utilises her expressions of incredulity that she mastered in Ari Aster's 'Midsommar' rather well. I jest. She really is good, even if she is saddled with a tame character. Pine, always reliable, is perfect in the role. He should play villains more often. Acting clearly is not Styles' strong suit, but he does fine here. The setting is richly realised with and is nicely detailed as well.

'Don't Worry Darling' is not the trailblazing piece of art that its marketing promised, but it is neither a disaster that many feared. It's, as I said earlier, just fine.