Florence Pugh and Harry Styles play a couple who find trouble in paradise in a thriller that's nowhere near as interesting as its production history.
These are diverting but also depressing questions, and this is a review of a movie, not of a publicity campaign. [isolated, master-planned community](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-08-29/dont-worry-darling-palm-springs-olivia-wilde-fall-arts-preview), and also by the bright-colored surfaces of Katie Byron’s Atomic Age production design. Does that make Pugh the living embodiment of her heroine, a much-abused woman quietly but determinedly eyeing the exits? [“Booksmart,”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-booksmart-review-20190523-story.html) with its furious pacing and whip-smart comedy, may be surprised by the peculiar leadenness of this sophomore slump. Wilde’s most arresting visual flourish is to reference the kaleidoscopic dance spectacles of Busby Berkeley, as Alice is repeatedly struck by black-and-white visions of 1930s-style showgirls dancing in circular formations. If you follow celebrity gossip and movie-biz headlines, you’ve probably read a thing or two about that history, particularly the At a certain point — around the time Alice’s eyes fall on a secret folder labeled “SECURITY RISK” (because “PLOT TWIST INCOMING” would’ve been too obvious) — what’s meant to be creepily insinuating in “Don’t Worry Darling” turns laughably blunt. Directed by Olivia Wilde and written by Katie Silberman (from a story credited to Silberman, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke), it’s a handsomely assembled, increasingly transparent thriller that stomps when it should creep and drags when it should accelerate. It helps that Alice has a husband, Jack (Harry Styles), who’s more or less the anti-Ralph, and not just because he thinks nothing of sweeping the dinner plates aside and treating his wife as a tabletop amuse-bouche. And “Don’t Worry Darling,” for all its sinister undercurrents and feints at subversion, turns out to be a disappointingly heavy thud of a movie. Who exactly is Frank (a silky-smooth Chris Pine), the combination corporate boss, town mayor and cult leader who exerts such a hold on Alice and Jack and the other couples living in this sunbaked utopia? Watching her go about her daily routine — cooking every meal, cleaning the house from top to bottom and venturing into town for the occasional grocery run — you might be reminded of Alice Kramden.
Now that the film has debuted, maybe we can just focus on the movie itself, which is neither triumph nor disaster. Director Olivia Wilde has made an obvious and ...
Wilde can’t figure out how to get the story out of this eddy; she stalls and repeats until it’s time to just go ahead and reveal what’s happening because the movie has to end at some point. What remains consistent and undaunted throughout, though, is Pugh, a commanding and centered actor who makes the most of the hash she’s served. Of course, there is an ominous hum underlying all this sozzled good-living, the sense that nothing this perfectly secure and uniformly agreeable could be real. This is a planned community built by a shadowy corporation, one that has a vaguely messianic mission to advance humanity . Now that the film has debuted, maybe we can just focus on the movie itself, which is neither triumph nor disaster. Let us, if we can, put aside all the various mini-controversies that surrounded the lead up to the Venice premiere of Don’t Worry Darling.
Stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles arrive to screams on the red carpet.
[Olivia Wilde](https://deadline.com/tag/olivia-wilde/)’s Don’t Worry Darling had its world premiere at the [Venice](https://deadline.com/tag/venice/) Film Festival this evening. The 1950s societal optimism espoused by their CEO, Frank (Pine) — equal parts corporate visionary and motivational life coach — anchors every aspect of daily life in the tight-knit desert utopia. [Venice Film Festival Red Carpet Photos](https://deadline.com/2022/09/venice-film-festival-2022-photo-gallery-timothee-chalamet-bones-and-all-cast-cate-blanchett-alejandro-g-inarritu-1235106752/?preview_id=1235106752&preview_nonce=c03305b3ce&_thumbnail_id=1235108635&preview=true) Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. “As for all the endless tabloid gossip and noise out there, the internet feeds itself. But the swirl of controversy involving Shia LaBeouf’s withdrawal from the project and questions over Florence Pugh’s absence from the
Olivia Wilde's “Don't Worry Darling” had its world premiere Monday night a the Venice International Film Festival.
He has a process that, in some ways, seems to require a combative energy, and I don’t personally believe that is conducive to the best performances.” Pugh is in the middle of production on “Dune 2,” a massive blockbuster (also a Warner Bros. In response, LaBeouf sent private emails, texts and video messages to Variety to prove his case that he actually quit due to lack of rehearsal time. “Florence is a force and we are so grateful that she is able to make it tonight,” Wilde said. Behind-the-scenes drama rarely extends beyond internal industry gossip, but the question of exactly what happened in the making of “Don’t Worry Darling” has become a source of global intrigue. That is by design.” Much of that was stoked by LaBeouf, who came out of the woodwork to contest a two-year-old narrative that he’d been fired from the project. She did offer: “His process was not conducive to the ethos that I demand in my productions. Though the star of the film, she did not attend the press conference as her flight had not yet landed. Some even took note of who was sitting next to who in the theater. “The internet feeds itself,” Wilde said. Many keyed in on the film’s press conference earlier in the day, with hopes that reports about behind-the-scenes tension with Pugh would be addressed or clarified.
Warner Bros. Popular on Variety. There's no denying Olivia Wilde can direct the hell out of a movie. And with her ...
The end product is a smorgasbord of high octane thrillers, similar to “Gone Girl” (2014), which landed a single nom for its leading actress Rosamund Pike. At the very least, it’s a film that will continue to generate plenty of chatter (there’s already a ton of pre-release headlines being made, some of them even about the movie itself). There’s no denying Olivia Wilde can direct the hell out of a movie.
Rumors of a behind-the-scenes feud started when director Olivia Wilde said that she fired Shia LaBeouf, who was originally cast in the film only to be ...
What I like about acting is that I feel like I have no idea what I am doing,” he said. But the idyllic calm is shattered when one of the neighborhood housewives goes missing and Pugh’s character Alice comes to question the reality surrounding her. I cannot say enough how honored I am to have her as my lead,” said Wilde, who also has a meaty role in the movie.