Strange Darling (2024)

[ronboster]

This has been on our radar since the trailer was released. I'm hoping my son and I can catch it this weekend. Our Summer of smaller films like Longlegs, Cuckoo etc continues.

[MikeScott]

Originally Posted by ronboster

This has been on our radar since the trailer was released. I'm hoping my son and I can catch it this weekend. Our Summer of smaller films like Longlegs, Cuckoo etc continues.

That's been my summer as well. I've pretty much only gone to indie movies (Longlegs, Oddity, Cuckoo, Skincare, Strange Darling).

[The Great Owl]

Five stars

Men are afraid of being rejected on a first date. Women are afraid of being murdered on a first date. This unsettling gender interaction dynamic is surely at the forefront in the mind of one lady, played by Willa Fitzgerald, as she sits in an automobile with a man, played by Kyle Gallner, and contemplates a one-night stand with him after having met him earlier that evening. She says to him, in a seemingly joking way, “So, I'm gonna have to ask you a question. Are you a serial killer?”

The above dialogue during the opening sequence of Strange Darling, a 2023 thriller directed by JT Mollner and newly released in theaters during the summer of 2024, sets the stage for a whirlwind of uncomfortable character-building, bloody mayhem, and even car chases, all of which are captured on 35mm film with colorful splendor by none other than actor Giovanni Ribisi, who, as director of photography, lends an Italian giallo aura to the proceedings. The narrative, which is conveyed in a nonlinear fashion by way of six chapters and an epilogue, is described in the opening credits as an account of the final deaths at the hands of a murderer whose grisly spree spanned across several states before coming to an end in Oregon.

The intense survival horror tale that unfolds over the course of the 97-minute run time is so relentlessly harrowing that viewers will not have a chance to rest for a breath until the closing credits. This is one of my favorite movies of the past year, one that I look forward to seeing again just to enjoy its many situational nuances.

The first scene, which perfectly encapsulates the apprehension felt when one takes a chance on a romantic encounter with an unfamiliar partner, casts its brilliant pall over the remainder of this endeavor. As Fitzgerald's lead observes while sitting in the passenger seat of the car before going into a hotel room with a stranger, many of us men will never truly understand the gamble that a woman takes with her safety just to have a well-deserved good time.