In this review, I’ll not only discuss if Don’t Worry Darling is worth checking out. I’ll reveal a potentially epic twist ending that the director and writer missed out on.
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.
About: After an endless amount of drama – Spit-Gate, Pugh-hate, Shia LaBeouf no longer being your mate — that became so obsessively covered that when it was reported Florence Pugh could only stay 15 minutes at the film’s Venice premiere because she was filming Dune 2, other news outlets questioned why Dune 2’s other big star, Timothee Chalamet, was able to come to the festival for an entire day — Don’t Worry Darling finally came out this weekend and made 20 million bucks. It was a haul nobody in the media liked because they couldn’t spin it into a good story. Had the film bombed, it would’ve been a perfect final chapter to all the behind-the-scenes drama. If it had been a hit, it would’ve been the ultimate redemption story. But, instead, it ended up right there in the middle at the amount everybody expected it to make.
Writers: The original script was written by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke. Olivia Wilde then brought in her Booksmart writer, Katie Silberman, to rewrite it.
Details: 2 hours long
Some would argue that the drama that went on behind the scenes of Don’t Worry Darling amounted to a better story than what ended up in front of the camera. The project is a rare studio release that came from a naked spec script sale, which is why I’ve been disproportionately obsessed with it.
Director Olivia Wilde, who had been unofficially propped up as Hollywood’s “Me Too” spokesperson after her beloved “you go girl” freshman picture, Booksmart, won the hearts and minds of Rotten Tomato critics, was set to level up with this movie, which was set to promote the power of feminism through its not-so-subtle message that men are a bunch of controlling jerk-faces.
I was particularly interested in how Wilde would approach the rewrite. For the record, I felt the original script was simplistic. And after seeing the excellent trailers for Wilde’s movie, it looked like she had solved that problem. The movie looked much deeper and more nuanced than the screenplay, which only increased my interest.
It’s the 1950s. We meet Alice and Jack, a very in-love young couple who live in a new community out in the desert. It’s run by this guy named Frank, who’s sort of like a 50s self-help dude on steroids.
After one of Alice’s friends tries to kill herself, Alice starts to question her own happiness and begins looking deeper into this Frank guy. He’s so smug. He’s so sure of himself. There’s something off about him.
After Alice spots a plane crashing in the desert, she heads off to help, only to find a strange house in the middle of nowhere. It’s here where she starts to suspect she’s not living in reality.
After her friends beg her to stop questioning Frank’s utopia, Alice finally learns the truth. (SPOILERS!) She’s living in a simulation, placed in here by Jack because she was too busy with work in the real world and never had time for him. So now she’s got to get out. But is it too late?
A photo more meticulously staged than The Last Supper.
I was curious how Wilde was going to change the story from the original script.
She stated, in interviews, that she liked the original idea but implied it wasn’t up to par. Which is why she brought in her own writer. I agree with her that the spec wasn’t up to snuff. But now you’re on the clock. If you’re going to change it, you better make it better. Did she?
[Major spoilers follow]
In the original script, there was no question we were in the 1950s. And it was a “clean” 1950s. It wasn’t some special community. The reason that was such a pivotal choice was that it made the twist truly shocking. When we find out that it’s actually the 2040s and the 1950s world is a simulation, it was a big “WHOA” moment and the reason that the script became such a big deal.
For reasons I’ll expand on in a second, Wilde and Silberman ditched that. Instead, they created this situation whereby a bunch of people got up, left their lives, and went out to live in an isolated community. In one of a handful of badly written aspects of the script, it’s never clear if the people in the community left their modern (2022) lives to live this 1950s life, or if they left their 1950s life to live an even more isolated 1950s life.
Right there, you’ve committed a major script faux pas. You’ve made something that didn’t need to be complex unnecessarily complex. And I know the rationale for why they did it. They did it because they couldn’t have characters mixing with the rest of society. They couldn’t have them wanting to go on vacations or explore the world or head down to San Diego. So they created this isolated town in the middle of nowhere where nobody could ever leave. It allowed Wilde and Silberman to have total control over their characters.
The problem with this is, we know the twist pretty much after the first 10 minutes. We know this place is artificial because you’ve got a radio station that talks about tech-y things and you’ve got men who walk around in red jumpsuits and you’ve got husbands who go off to a secret Marvel underground base every morning.
You’ve tipped your hand before you’ve even got to the inciting incident.
The way you pull off a big twist is to not tell us any of these things. Which is the one thing that the original spec got right. They made us believe we were living in the year 1954. So that when we wake up in 2050, we’re like, “HOLY S#$%.” It was a total shock
Wilde almost made up for this weak choice by inventing the character of Frank, played by Chris Pine. Frank is like the world’s biggest self-help guru, to the point where he’s built his own community so he can infuse every aspect of his philosophy into the townspeople.
As the script goes on, this rivalry begins to emerge between Frank and Alice, taking a narrative that was fast decaying and resurrecting it. There’s a really fun scene late in the movie where Alice attempts to take Frank down in front of all her friends – to prove that he’s manipulating and lying to them. When the script focused on those two, it worked.
And about three-quarters of the way through the movie, I realized why Wilde had changed the original screenplay. This new character, Frank, infused the story with an omnipotent malevolence. There’s even a scene where Alice and Jack sneak off to have sex during Frank’s party and Frank catches them. He and Alice lock eyes in a sexy but uncomfortable way as she’s having sex with Jack but Jack never sees this.
And I thought, oh my God, Olivia Wilde came up with a way better final twist! That’s why she changed the original spec! I was convinced that instead of Alice waking up and finding out that Jack had incapacitated her to keep her in this virtual world, instead, Frank had created AN ENTIRE WORLD in order to control and be with all of these women.
I thought we were going to find out that none of the husbands were real. They were all Frank’s virtual creations, bodies he could slip in and out of whenever he wanted, allowing him to be with all of these woman. It’s basically the original twist, but on crack.
“Frank’s 1950 Simulation Pleasure Matrix.” Now THAT would’ve been a great twist.
But, instead, they stayed with the original twist, showing that Alice was being kept in a coma by Jack in his apartment so he could control her. Which no longer worked because you basically hinted that something like this was going on all the way back on page 10 and then kept telling us over and over again that it was coming. They found a way to neuter the twist as much as possible. Wilde may have introduced a new screenwriting term – the “twist neuter.”
But probably the biggest surprise here was that Wilde did a poor job conveying the original feminist message of the screenplay. Which is strange because the original screenplay was written by two men. And the rewrite was written by two women. So you’d think that Wilde and Silberman would’ve gotten that right.
The original script leaned hard into toxic masculinity and men wanting to control women. You don’t get that sense here. Jack was super in love with Alice. He’d clearly do anything for her. Sexually, he was more interested in pleasing her than her pleasing him. If the idea was to convey that Jack was this awful toxic male who wanted a robot for a wife, they did a really poor job of it. The original script made that much clearer.
Also, Alice’s best friend in the film, Bunny (played by Wilde) – it turns out she knew she was in the simulation all along. She actually CHOSE to be in the simulation because, in the real world, her kids died. Here, in the simulation, she could have her kids be alive.
So, wait a minute. Is this simulation designed so that men can imprison their wives and make them their virtual slaves, as was the focus in the original script? Or is this an “anything goes” simulation, where you can come here for whatever reason you want? Cause it sounds like the latter. And, if that’s the case, what the heck is your movie about?
It was sloppiness like that that kept intruding upon a really cool concept. Which made it frustrating.
But you know what?
I still recommend this movie.
And let me tell you why.
The cinematography and, overall, vision of the film, is really strong. Wilde deserves a lot of credit here. There’s a scene early on in the film where Jack and Alice are doing donuts in their car in the desert. It’s filmed from above and it’s not only beautiful, but it CAPTURES THE MOMENT. These were two drunk and in love people just enjoying each other’s company. That camera shot sold that better than any other shot they could’ve used. And there were a dozen moments like that in the film where the visuals truly sold the moment.
Definitely should start worrying, darling.
I also loved Florence Pugh. Even when the script hit choppy waters, she was a ship-steadyer. She’s just a great actress and she’s always 100% committed to her performance. She *was* Alice here. Just like there’s suspension of disbelief in screenwriting, there’s suspension of disbelief in acting. If the acting is weak, we’re pulled out of the movie. Florence Pugh is the opposite of that. She’s so in it we can’t help but be in it with her.
Chris Pine is also superb. I love him as an actor and I love him here. My only complaint was that he wasn’t in the movie enough. I get the feeling that if they had a couple more drafts, he would’ve been more present and we would’ve gotten that awesome final twist.
Even Harry Styles is solid. I’ve heard a lot of people say he’s a terrible actor but I didn’t see that. Who knows? Maybe all that extra attention Wilde gave him in the trailer resulted in him picking up a few acting tips. I suppose there’s a method to every director’s madness.
And then you gotta give credit to Wilde. She’s the one who cast these actors. She came up with the overall vision of this movie.
It’s just that the script wasn’t there. And, hey, welcome to the hardest part of making a great movie – writing a great script. Wilde is not alone in falling short in that department. She’s another casualty of the elusive puzzle that is nailing the screenplay
But I was right there with Alice all the way until the final frame. And for that reason, I say this film is worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You don’t want to mess with a good twist. Good twists are rare. I come across one or two of them a year in the screenplays I read. Where I genuinely think, “Whoa. I did not see that coming! That was great!” So when you have that, you don’t want to overthink it, which is what Wilde and Silberman did. When you tell us at the outset that we’re in an artificial community, you put the audience on guard that something funny is going on. And it totally killed the power of this twist. Cause you’ve already put us on the “twist lookout” 70 pages earlier.
