{"id":50363,"date":"2025-10-29T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=50363"},"modified":"2025-10-30T10:59:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T14:59:21","slug":"strange-darling-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/29\/strange-darling-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Darling [2024] [Halloween Horror Month 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A man and a woman have a thrilling and surprising cat-and-mouse chase in writer-director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling. <\/p>\n

This review originally ran at CityOfGeek.com, with a few edits.<\/em><\/p>\n

A young woman, obviously in distress, with disheveled clothes, running make-up, and blood welling from where her ear used to be, speeds down a wooded country road in a bright red 1978 Pinto. Tearing up behind her is a massive black truck. Behind the wheel is a determined, sweaty, and bloody man; rifle next to him on the seat. Thus begins Strange Darling, a speeding bullet of a brilliant second feature from writer-director JT Mollner. While it does have minutes to slow down a little, the film is mostly at a run, pulling the viewer behind with gleeful abandon.<\/p>\n

Starting\u00a0in media res\u00a0<\/em>can often be a clich\u00e9 and lazy way to open a film. Strange Darling is neither cliched nor lazy in any way. Subtitled on screen as \u201cA Thriller in Six Parts,\u201d the jumbled method is imperative to how the film works. The viewer doesn\u2019t only ask \u201cHow do these characters get to this point?\u201d but \u201cWhy does Mollner choose to tell the story this way?\u201d In this method, we remain active in the story. It\u2019s easy to figure out that what we see at the start isn\u2019t wholly the truth. Theories are created, altered, squashed, and built on in the viewer\u2019s mind. Expectations are shifted, subverted, and twisted. It\u2019s a smart script, full of subtleties, surprises, and brilliant motions. It would be easy for each turn to undo a previous bit of information or lessen the impact. But there are no cheats; it\u2019s logically sound even as it all changes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It helps to have two skillful actors on hand. Willa Fitzgerald is \u201cThe Woman\u201d. She excelled as the icily brilliant younger Madeline Usher in the ensemble of\u00a0House of Usher,<\/em>\u00a0but she shines as half of the front-and-center core duo. More than a mere victim or Final Girl, she commands attention. The other half is Kyle Gallner as \u201cThe Demon\u201d. Gallner is no stranger to horror, either: as the lead in\u00a0Haunting in Connecticut,\u00a0<\/em>and within the casts of\u00a0J<\/em>ennifer\u2019s Body,\u00a0one of the\u00a0Nightmare on Elm Street\u00a0remake teens, Red State, both\u00a0Smile films, and others. But might I take a side trip to recommend with the highest regard the non-horror but incredible dark-comedy of suburban hellDinner in America? After you finish this review, jump to Hulu and watch it now. Ahem, back to the movie. Interestingly, both Fitzgerald and Gallner have met Ghostface: her in the Scream\u00a0TV show, and he was an early victim in\u00a0Scream V.<\/p>\n

Both Fitzgerald and Gallner move deftly through all that is required of them with ease in fully committed work. Together, their chemistry is off the charts. They play off one another so well, a credit to them and Mollner in finessing complicated performances. While it\u2019s a small film, mainly the two- they do come across various others. Most notably, stalwarts Ed Begley, Jr of Transylvania 6-5000 and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, and Barbara Hershey of The Entity and Insidious, as a hippie couple. As in everything Begley does, they are delightfully weird. They make a lot of their smaller parts.<\/p>\n

Mollner builds a fascinating world around electric chemistry and twisty storytelling. Giovanni Ribisi is primarily known as an actor (if you don\u2019t know his name, you\u2019d recognize Ribisi from\u00a0Avatar, Friends, or the \u201cweasely little guy\u201d in a ton of things), but he breaks in as director of photography (along with producing and providing a voice) for\u00a0Strange Darling. Shot in 35mm, it has a deep 70s, near Grindhouse, look (heck, the film opens with a direct homage to\u00a0The Texas Chain Saw Massacre\u2019s opening). 2024 was a great year for soaking in the 70s: Cuckoo,\u00a0Longlegs,\u00a0Immaculate, The First Omen, and\u00a0Late Night with the Devil\u00a0all lean on the aesthetic of the era (with\u00a0Alien: Romulus often feeling ripped directly from the world of the 1979 original). Both\u00a0Cuckoo\u00a0and\u00a0Longlegs\u00a0were also shot (and released limitedly) on 35mm, and I wish I could have caught\u00a0Strange Darling in the format as well. The color and grain give depth to the Oregon wilderness. It\u2019s a beautiful film, stocked with great shot choices. Like\u00a0Cuckoo, this could easily have been set in 1978. I wonder why it isn\u2019t.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I also appreciated a low-key soundtrack. The score from Craig DeLeon is thumping and immersive. But Z Berg\u2019s songs (all original except a cover of \u201cLove Hurts\u201d) set the tone with a haunting ethereal sound reminiscent of Julee Cruise and Lana Del Ray. I\u2019d buy the disc.<\/p>\n

Low-budget, high-quality original horror films had a great 2024. The movies listed above, along with Oddity,\u00a0In a Violent Nature, and\u00a0I Saw the TV Glow, have made 2024 a banner year for genre fans.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad to add Strange Darling to this cadre of quality.<\/p>\n

JT Mollner\u2019s Strange Darling is an electric buzz of a film, effortlessly creating a tense and shifting story, led by two strong performances and buffeted up by a great look and soundtrack. [For more JT Mollner goodness, check out 2025’s The Long Walk and my review for it. He wrote the flick.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man and a woman have a thrilling and surprising cat-and-mouse chase in writer-director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[477],"class_list":["post-50363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50363"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50387,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50363\/revisions\/50387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}