Strange Darling(2024) - Gruesome Gazette

Hype around new movies is a funny, fickle thing. On one hand, there is no better way to encourage conversation in promotion of a new release than getting the public talking about it for one reason or another. On the other, when your movie is sold around the premise of a ‘bunch of twists and turns’, you not only align your audience with a bunch of expectations you force yourself to live up to, but you also risk spoiling the experience as a whole since they are now expecting something to happen (aka the “Shyamalan” experience). Over the summer, Stephen King himself went to his trusty social media platform to praise ‘Strange Darling’ for being an unconventional, uncomfortable experience. So with the year winding to an end, I finally pulled the trigger myself.

‘Strange Darling’ is, at its core, a serial killer tale that circles around a man and woman having a one-night-stand that goes off the rails. It opens with a textual, narrated opening about how this is based off a true story (in a very ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ style). The film itself then begins by showing a blonde woman in a red dress running through the woods in slow motion as a man with a shotgun pursues her. And our first major reveal begins when we finally get the title card that reads “Strange Darling: A Thriller in 6 Chapters”.

The gimmick behind this film is that it’s 6 chapters are told out of sequence. It pulls off the ‘Memento’ and ‘Irreversible’ thing by engaging its audience by giving us all the pieces we need for the puzzle, but since its out of context, it becomes a different level of interpretation and participation. It’s a twisted, beautifully shot tale that delivers on a thrilling, constantly teeter-tottering story where you almost are given a cliffhanger every 15 or so minutes as one chapter concludes and another begins. I was guessing multiple times what I thought was actually happening, and I was wrong a handful of those times – so even a veteran horror fan will likely walk away from this experience feeling satisfied, if not a bit humbled.

It isn’t gushing with violence, but when it does go there it certainly delivers. The main two characters are played by Kyle Gallner (Smile, Red State, Nightmare on Elm Street ’09) & Willa Fitzgerald (Reacher, The Fall of the House of Usher) who both have magnetic chemistry throughout this cat-and-mouse styled piece.

And without playing my hand too aggressively, you will most definitely be seeing this somewhere amongst my “Top 10 of 2024” list.

4/5
“Strange Darling” is currently available to rent/buy on VOD services.

‘Til Next Time,
Mike Cleopatra