Strange Darling

2024 Directed by JT Mollner

Halloween Marathon 2024 Day 29 Film 58

How do you talk about a film whose central contrivance is to lure the audience into false expectations of the narrative? I went in totally blind, but in many ways this is a film that's all about genre tropes and the creation of narrative perceptions. It also feels like it contains some of the dumbest plotting I've seen in awhile.

It starts with a recreation of the energy and atmosphere of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (complete with an introductory scrawl)- a frenetic pace that the film itself can't sustain as it starts to boggle with chapter surfing time jumps. The nonlinear aspect does help to maintain some tension and vigor for the momentum of the film, but they are also manipulations of audience awareness and hide the weaknesses of logic in the character arcs. In many ways then this is less a film about actualized characters, but of archetypes. Perhaps this is highlighted more because of how much it aims at clever ideas and is sometimes effective. When these characters do dumb things it feels out of place.

The amalgam of genres does borrow a lot from Hitchcock while spinning on horror nostalgia to be subversive. Everything looks fantastic- but when a screen proclaims at the start that the film was shot on 35mm it becomes farcical. In many ways this shows how artists and fans geek out and get so wrapped in the format and style of a movie while bypassing solid storytelling. As much as it jumps the shark at every turn the film's kinetic energy allows it to be hedonistic and knowingly campy in the performances. It's salacious and soapy, and the story collapses on itself- sometimes becoming too cute in the execution to really be subversive. All of that said when viewed as a pulpy thriller it's a playful guilty pleasure.

As a sidenote: This was interesting to watch after Revenge as they both play with horror tropes. Revenge is a bit snappier and straightforward, but they made for a nice pairing.