Venice Film Festival 2022: ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ May Not be ‘Oscar-Worthy’

Directed by Olivia Wilde, Don’t Worry Darling debuted at the Venice Film Festival on September 5th. While the movie received a 5-minute standing ovation from the attendees, the reviews might say otherwise.

The premiere of the movie was attended by Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan and Florence Pugh – who flew in late from the Budapest set of Dune 2. The Little Women actor was received with warm welcome as she stepped onto the red carpet in a shimmering gown.

The plot of the movie follows the everyday life of the residents in Victory Project Headquarters – a 1960s Palm Springs, mid-century development ringed by threatening desert mountains. This is a planned community built by a shadowy corporation, one that has a vaguely messianic mission to advance humanity . . . somehow. The men, all handsome, go off to work each morning while the women, all pretty, look after the kids or soak themselves in afternoon cocktails with neighbour wives. (Or they do both.) There is an ominous hum underlying all this sozzled good-living, the sense that nothing this perfectly secure and uniformly agreeable could be real.

The Deadline’s Pete Hammond called Wilde’s film a “candy-coated psychological thriller” about “the terror imposed by men controlling women’s bodies.”

Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson reviews, “Once the film starts showing its cards, it hurries to its climax and conclusion, complete with an unconvincing car chase and a murder. What energy the movie had has been sapped. It staggers across the finish line as it asks us to consider something profound.”

Whereas, Variety’s Clayton Davis feels that the movie is “isn’t a major Oscar contender”.