*This article contains many spoilers*
My roommates and I planned to see Don’t Worry Darling in the theater for weeks, and finally, we went on Sunday night. We sat among each other in astonishment, for multiple reasons. The thriller/horror movie was mesmerizing but also anxiety-inducing.
The first reason is the cast itself. It’s full of talented, great-looking actresses and actors. (We admit our bias toward Harry Styles and Florence Pugh- who play the married couple, Alice and Jack Chambers.) Here is a plot summary: (I’ll try my best to cover everything.)
Don’t Worry Darling possesses some of the common movie tropes. The film makes you think it’s taking place somewhere around the 1950s and is centered around the “victory project” in a fake town called Victory in California. The victory project is a present-day, highly advanced form of virtual reality. In the utopian experimental community, men work every day while women clean, cook, go shopping and hang out together. I hated watching it as much as you hate hearing that. But everyone seemed perfectly happy in the community, and the women weren’t allowed to ask questions. So, basically, you learn about halfway through the film that everything is a lie. The viewers find out the truth when Alice finds out the truth. The community has one rule: no one is allowed to go near the victory headquarters, except the employees (men).This is also the only way to exit the program (something the wives didn’t know). So, did the men know? Oh, yes. In the day, when the men leave for “work,” they exit the program and return to the real world to take care of the wives’ real bodies and make enough money to remain in the victory program. I did not expect any of that.
Frank, the founder of the project, and his partner, Dr. Collins were sketchy the entire movie. One of the other wives and neighbors, Margaret went “crazy,” according to the rest of the community. She saw a plane crash in the desert and bought her son, who went missing. She tried getting too close to headquarters. Things become revealed and Alice goes insane, like Margaret, and sees the plane crash, but this time, Alice gets further than her. Sadly, Margaret ends up trying to kill herself. Alice goes through daily cycles of confusion hallucinations, hearing music and basically not feeling like herself.
Maybe, because she actually wasn’t herself…
Alice ends up confronting Frank about what she believes to be true, which results in one of the film’s most powerful scenes. Everything escalates and comes down, revealing the scary truth. Alice is no longer the seemingly happy housewife.
The twist is finally revealed, and it is all taking place in cyberspace in a virtual reality world. In modern times, Jack and Alice are married too, but Jack lost his job while Alice is a doctor, and their relationship is going very downhill. Alice isn’t happy with her life, but loves her work, and Jack is lazy. He finds Frank’s podcast about the victory program and agrees to all the conditions without Alice knowing. Some viewers thought they were divorced at this time, but I wasn’t sure. He places Alice into a medically induced coma state, connects her to a virtual reality device (with her eyes stuck open) with an IV. Insanity! I couldn’t believe it. I especially couldn’t believe I watched Harry Styles doing this! So, she has been lucid dreaming, and the virtual dream has seemed very real. Most of the women were forced to be there against their will, other than one neighbor Bonnie (Olivia Wilde). She lost her children in the real world and decided to stay in the simulation, so she could remain with her children, though we learn that the few children that are in the simulation are in fact, not real. Frank’s wife, Shelly was also aware of the simulation. She ended up killing Frank when Alice was escaping. Oh! Yes, Alice made it out of Victory alive, but Jack didn’t. Alice pieced everything together with the song she kept humming throughout the movie. Her brain reminded her of a time when she and Jack were once happy, in real life, and the memory eventually snapped her out of the hypnosis. This scene, in some way, was sad to watch. I obviously don’t feel bad for Jack at all since he took Alice’s freedom of choice and took a part of her life. But, in this scene, they still somehow loved each other, but his love for her was so sickening. Sickening enough for him to do something like keeping her captive against her will. So, she ends up killing him which kills him in the real world.
“Don’t Worry Darling” aims to explore the tyranny of the patriarchy, disguised as domestic bliss. Basically, yeah. I loved this movie and will definitely watch it again. There were a lot of minimal details that now make so much sense. It’s crazy to think the men in the movie used the simulation as a shortcut to their happiness and kept the women believing everything was real. It was cinematically pleasing and alluring too. I don’t think this film was overhyped at all. I’m obsessed with it and recommend everyone to watch it.