TW: movie involves violence, attempted suicide
It’s been a few weeks since “Don’t Worry Darling” (2022) debuted in theaters, so now it’s time to share my thoughts. If you haven’t seen the film, then this is your major SPOILER WARNING!!!
The plot is about Alice and Jack, a young married couple played by Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, living in the 1950s utopian California. They seem to have everything; the perfect house, the perfect social life, Jack even has the perfect job. But the women don’t know what he and the men do for work other than progressive materials.
Alice and Jack are invited to a social gathering with their friends and meet Violet and her husband Bill, played by Sydney Chandler and Douglas Smith, who are their new neighbors. Everyone briefly sees Margaret and her husband Peter, played by Kiki Layne and Asif Ali. Margaret appears to have a mental breakdown and Peter leaves with her. Shelley, played by Gemma Chan, introduces her husband Frank, played by Chris Pine, to talk about the victory project. Alice wanders off and sees Margaret and Peter. Margaret still looks stressed out, so Peter closes the curtain on Alice. We learn Margaret and her son were walking alone near the victory headquarters area where the men worked and her son mysteriously disappeared, which traumatized her.
Alice hangs out with Peg and Bunny, played by Kate Berlant and Olivia Wilde, and they talk about Margaret. Peg questions if the other two ever wonder about what their husbands are really doing for work. This makes Alice more curious about her environment. Bunny tells Peg to stop talking about these topics. One day Alice goes out on a bus ride and on her way back she sees an airplane crash and tells the bus driver to stop. He refuses and she decides to leave the bus to look for herself. As she walks closer to the victory headquarters area, she ends up finding herself waking up in her home and she sees Jack cooking dinner. This causes her to experience nightmares and hallucinations, and she tries to act like this is not bothering her. That is, until she receives a phone call from Margaret and tells her she knows she’s not the only one who knows what’s really going on with the victory project. Alice tells her to stop and hangs up the phone. When Alice is at the dance studio with her peers and experiences a vision-like experience of Margaret killing herself, which freaks Alice out, and she rushes to her home to stop Margaret. But once she arrives Margaret slits her throat and falls down to the ground, and Alice gets taken by a group of henchmen.
Jack and Alice speak to Dr. Collins, played by Timothy Simons, about Alice’s well-being and she asks him about Margaret. He tells Jack and Alice that Margaret is recovering in the hospital. But Alice tells him this was not what happened and she witnessed this. Alice slowly but surely becomes more concerned about the victory project especially because Jack is working there and tries to convince him to tell her what they actually do. But this leads to an argument between them.
They get invited to Frank’s party, and Frank announces in front of everyone that Jack is being promoted, which makes Alice more worried. She tells Bunny that the victory project is being shady and how they must be hiding something from them. Bunny refuses to hear this and tells her she’s acting just like Margaret and leaves. Alice tries to do damage control by inviting their friends, including Frank and Shelley, to a dinner to learn more about what Frank’s intentions. This backfires on her, and everyone looks at her as if she were crazy. Jack and Alice have another argument and Alice tells him they should move away from here and start over. Jack accepts her idea only to trick her into getting captured by the henchmen and being examined at a hospital.
And then the MAJOR PLOT TWIST comes in!!! We learn that Alice worked as a nurse in the modern world and her husband Jack was an unemployed man who encountered a podcast online hosted by Frank. He ended up putting himself and Alice into a virtual reality, which was 1950s California. Towards the end of the film, Alice realizes this as her body experiences pain and calls out Jack for putting them through this. He claims he did this so they can have a better life but Alice tells him she enjoyed working. Jack holds onto Alice and she wants nothing to do with him so, she kills him with a glass cup. Bunny arrives and finds Jack dead and tells Alice she knew about this the whole time and went to the virtual reality voluntarily. She tells Alice she needs to escape if she wants to survive, and Alice ends up driving away to the victory headquarters with all the men hot on her trail. And another PLOT TWIST, Shelley murders Frank and says it’s her turn now. Alice’s car breaks down and she starts running up to the mountain to escape. The ending was very open-ended. There’s no definite answer, which leaves the audience to decide what happened in the end.
The movie wasn’t what I thought this was going to be, but in a good way. The visuals and aesthetics were very stylish, pleasing, and glamorous. Florence Pugh stole the show as her character Alice and everyone seemed to have a good role in the movie. I give this movie a B+.