Whisper House Press

Disclaimer: Just as was the case with It’s What’s Inside last January at Sundance, writing about Strange Darling is tricky because any reveal of content at all is too much revealed. You’ve got to go in cold. I’m working here to make it possible to pick up some thematic and structural elements without learning anything the filmmakers wouldn’t want you to know.

What happens when the generation who grew up watching Quentin Tarantino films starts making their own horror and thriller movies? Strange Darling, a thriller starring Willa Fitzgerald as “The Lady” and Kyle Gallner as “The Demon,” is what happens.

This movie isn’t merely a Tarantino homage… though it does traffic in a chapter-based structure and bold title cards. It’s its own thing, and the elements it borrows work to its credit in accentuating what is different about Mollner’s film rather than rendering it distractingly derivative. Mollner also hits us with percussive sounds rather than funky soundtracks, closely executes editorial jump cuts, and has directed actors toward the requisite emotional commitments necessary to putting the audience right where he wants us. The arrangement of chapters is un-Tarantino-like and works brilliantly to tell the story Mollner wants to tell—about the audience as well as about the characters in the movie.

My first viewing was, as I always enjoy, alone in a theater. The second was beside my wife, who at my request narrated aloud what she was thinking about the characters as the story unfolded. I was careful not to give her any of my own impressions, and it was interesting to hear the shift in how she thought about her own assumptions as the movie progressed. I was able, in her exclamations, to hear aloud the thoughts I had about myself the first time I’d seen it. And there’s a risk of a movie like this being “too clever by half,” but Mollner in his writing and directing acumen avoids this stealthily—this aspect is reminiscent of Rian Johnson’s careful choices with Knives Out (2019). Forcing the audience where you want them is a skill not every director/writer can accomplish, but JT Mollner does it was aplomb and a deft hand.

Strange Darling has been the only film released this year to which I’ve given five stars. (Nosferatu, we shall see…)