“Are you a serial killer?” asks a woman sitting in a pick up truck with a man she just met at a bar. The neon sign from the motel they are parked outside bathes the couple in cool, blue light. “Do you have any idea of the risks a woman like me takes every time she agrees to have a bit of fun?”
As we see this very woman being chased by the same man in the next scene, we wouldn’t be wrong to assume Strange Darling is a cat-and-mouse thriller with a #MeToo slant. Instead, this twisty and bold film from JT Mollner (Outlaws and Angels) will spend the next 96 minutes toying with these assumptions.
But first Strange Darling gets off to a clunky start. It opens with an unnecessary announcement: “Shot entirely on 35mm film”, then two pivotal scenes in the film flash past before an opening scroll and voiceover gives some exposition. Next, a slow-motion shot of said woman running toward the camera soundtracked to Nazareth’s “Love Hurts”. Incidentally, this discombobulated opening sequence is a good indication of what is to come: pastiche, bumpy editing and surprises.
The woman and man in question are credited as the Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) and the Demon (Kyle Gallner) and as the scroll tells us, we are watching the final days of a prolific serial killer's rampage which has culminated in the dense forest of Oregon. Through six chapters, told in a non-linear fashion, a more complicated story than the one we first assumed begins to emerge, taking us to a seedy motel room, a fiercely directed car chase and a sadistic game of hide-and-seek. If you think I am being slightly opaque regarding the plot, it is because I am. This is a film that relies heavily on whiplash plot twists as JT Mollner takes great pleasure in drastically changing the dynamics of a scene in a heartbeat. Any spoilers would undermine the film considerably – which is perhaps a telling flaw of the film as a whole.
If its bait-and-switch tactics get a bit tiring, the film is a lot more interesting as a messy, subversive spin on the exploitation films of the 1970s it so clearly references. 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. Although Strange Darling isn’t too concerned with murder as morally justified revenge. Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman also comes to mind because of the way Mollard foregrounds the theme of consent – although Strange Darling is something far more testy and less politically legible than Fennel's film. One could even argue that there are scenes which have an outright anti-feminist sentiment.
But there is something invigorating about this mess. In a cinema landscape where a lot of films feel sanitized and overworked, Strange Darling has raw energy. The graphic violence, the bold colours and the physical performances by Fitzgerald and Gallner pack a satisfying punch.
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