STRANGE DARLING (2024)

The best advice you can have going in to Strange Darling is to know as little as possible about the plot.

If you’re still reading… the film is a cat-and-mouse, online dating, cautionary serial killer thriller. It begins with a Texas Chain Saw Massacre style faux-historical spiel on an unnamed, on the loose murder, and then lets you know it’s been shot in 35 mil (an odd technical declaration, though Giovanni Ribisi does it justice as the Director of Photography). The story is presented in six out of order chapters à la Pulp Fiction, which evolves out of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong. There’s drugs, violence, torture and an elderly Sasquash-fearing hippie couple that really loves breakfast. The narration, the clever names and the tone feel familiar, much like the films that mimicked Tarantino’s style in the 90’s, such as: 2 Days in the Valley (1996), Perdita Duango (1997), Love and a .45 (1994), The Boondock Saints (1999) and Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead (1995). And like those films, I enjoyed Strange Darling. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner do excellent work (The Lady & The Demon), however my biggest knock would be that the reason I suggested to go in without any prior knowledge of the plot was obvious within the first 15 minutes. I also wished it was Nazareth’s or The Everly Brothers’ version (or hell both) of Love Hurts that played throughout the film, but it is what it is. 

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: Watch yourself single people, it’s a cold world out there.