Alice, Darling has been on my schedule to review for quite some time now and quite frankly, it was nearly impossible to find. It came out on December 30th, but it was not showing in any theaters near me. It finally came out on streaming and the results? Meh.
Alice, Darling is tagged as a drama/thriller but it lacked any real thrills to me. It’s not necessarily a straightforward story, but it didn’t take any leaps to get my skin crawling or my heart pumping. While the story is about a woman in an unhealthy relationship and the toll it’s taking on her mentally, the movie also decided to throw in a subplot about a local girl going missing that had no impact on the story. If they had tied those two plot points together, I think this movie would have been entirely different and much more thrilling.
With the story we received though, Anna Kendrick plays the titular Alice who is in a relationship with Simon, and off the bat, we can see how their relationship plays out. She is very dependent on him for her emotional well-being and he gaslights her into this role. While the movie itself didn’t stand out as a whole for me, Kendrick plays her character very believingly, which is tough t watch given the position she is in. There are subtle things she does like practice the things she’s going to say to him before actually saying them and just frantically look around while putting on a calm facade in his presence that shows the power he has over her.
There’s also a scene where she loses an earring he gifted her and has a very hard-to-watch panic attack where she is ripping her own hair out and repeating how she doesn’t do anything right. Her friends try to help her find herself again, which was sweet but something I wish the movie spent more time on. Scrap the missing girl subplot and focus more on the friends helping Alice when she needs it most. As you might expect, by the end of the movie, Alice has the strength to leave Simon and stay with her friends when he tries to take her home.
Final Thoughts
Anna Kendrick outperformed this movie for me, which is unfortunate because this movie felt like it had the potential to be much better. I appreciate the message about the power of friendship and about the intricacies of relationships. Alice, Darling might age better for me if I rewatch it soon, but for now, I’m not in a place where I want to rewatch it.
