Reviewer Flickchart Ranking: 1,315 / 5,566 (76%)
So, are we allowed to blame Quentin Tarantino for all of these millennial filmmakers splitting their movies into titled chapters? I’m going to go ahead and do it now: f**k you, QT (but seriously, I love Pulp Fiction, 1994). JT Mollner’s neon-soaked serial killer chase film divides Strange Darling into segments, which allows him to maintain narrative structure while unfolding his tale in a nonlinear fashion. This gimmick brings too much attention to itself, but the trickery ultimately pays off; even if it doesn’t fully protect the story’s turn, it does elongate the central tension.
Starring the wonderfully unhinged Willa Fitzgerald (The Goldfinch, 2019) playing swimmingly off the calm, aloof presence of Kyle Gallner (American Sniper, 2014), we are introduced to our leads during a hook-up. A kinky, dark sexual session bathed in beautiful neon lighting eventually unwinds into an exhilarating chase to stop a devious serial killer. The patient and well-staged sex session involve multiple changes with who is in the dominant and submissive roles while maintaining a clear singular author. This theme plays out through Strange Darling as our characters are left in a violent dance that sees the upper hand alternate throughout, while whose story it is never alters.
Barbara Hershey and the always-welcomed Ed Begley Jr. show up as a couple of isolated, elderly hippies who broadcast Sasquatch-centered radio into their yard and provide the film with some anchoring. Strange Darling, if laid out bare, is a sparse story, but Mollner’s confidence and vision mold an engaging, stylized but believable world. This allows normal attendees who have a healthy relationship with movies and veteran cinephiles to fall under the spell of its twists and surprises.
Strange Darling is a cool movie, beautifully shot on 35mm, with great lead performances. The minimal story and plot machinations allow the viewer to be consumed by the emotional and psychological stylings and not weighed down by rehashed crime movie exposition or mile-a-minute quips. Rather Strange Darling pulls you into this dark, tense, violent relationship and forces you to just soak it in, blood and all, “chapter” after “chapter.”
