Strange Darling (2024)
Directed by JT Mollner
Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.
15 connections found
View:
15 films that influenced Strange Darling
What critics say influenced Strange Darling
A scene in which two people are talking in a car, a moment akin to the downtime in Breathless (1960), is bathed in the blue light of a motel sign that emphasizes the calm before a coming storm, and eases us into a moment of security amidst impending dread.
In a scene that pays homage to Steven Spielberg’s classic television film Duel (1971), Gallner’s demon bears down on Fitzgerald’s character in her tiny red Pinto with his gigantic dark pickup truck.
It’s a tightly-edited affair, with precise and specific shot choices mixed with a manic tone that reminds one of the “Night Rider” opening to 1979’s Mad Max.
Strange Darling wastes no time getting to the action, as the credits lead into a thrilling chase scene that is reminiscent of Death Proof (2007), with a black, roaring F-150 racing to catch a little orange Pinto and its bloodied driver.
Advertisement
She is simply possessed with some mysterious, unbridled spirit in this film that channels Alex Essoe in Starry Eyes and a cornered Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers.
It's the unchronological aspect, which feels ported over from "Pulp Fiction" and all the countless Tarantino clones that popped-up in the wake of that film (anyone remember "2 Days in the Valley"?
Quentin Tarantino made the nonlinear story format popular with Pulp Fiction.
“Strange Darling” can do straightforward brutality with the best of them. And yet, throughout the film, the actors’ playful portrayal — dipping in and out of an ever-shifting dynamic that seems too complicated to write down, let alone embody — recalls something like Mia Goth’s dazzling performance in “Pearl.” Fitzgerald tests her endurance in some delicately drawn-out one-shots, while Gallner makes his bid for small-time scream king armed with a shotgun and an assuredness that feels like its own assault.
There are plenty of movies that have covered this ground in cleverer ways such as “Audition” (1999), “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane” (2013), “Siren” (2018), “X” (2022), “Pearl” (2022), “Titane” (2021).
But it’s also proof that actor Giovanni Ribisi has been hiding out as one of Hollywood’s greatest living cinematographers — a fact laid to bare in some of the most beautiful murders this side of Dario Argento’s “Deep Red.”
Advertisement
Breaking up the story into chapters is slightly derivative of the literary storytelling that made Tarantino’s filmography so distinct.
Strange Darling shares DNA with films like Coralie Fargeat’s hard-as-nails Revenge, a film that reclaims the rancid “rape-and-revenge” sub-genre by subverting its exploitative gaze.