Film Review — Don’t Worry Darling

Wilde world

★★★☆☆

Like the eggs of Florence and Harry’s vintage Californian lovenest, Olivia Wilde’s anticipated sophomore effort lacks crucial substance.

Don’t Worry Darling looks great.

Scratch that, Don’t Worry Darling looks impeccable, a pristine production perfectly serving an immaculate, almost impossibly good-looking cast.

Florence Pugh is, predictably, brilliant in another role that puts her seemingly endless range to good use. Harry Styles is nowhere near as bad as some would have you think.

The first act is strong if fairly unoriginal, the happy couple’s utopia slowly unravelling to reveal a disappointing truth that I found increasingly frustrating the more I sat and thought about it.

Much was made of the film’s chaotic press tour, the PR equivalent of a plane crash, that may or may not have been fabricated to boost pre-release anticipation. Considering how it ultimately distracted from Wilde’s directorial efforts, I’m not sure where the fiction really ends.