Strange Darling is a 2024 thriller in the style of Quentin Tarantino that follows a man called Demon and a woman named Woman who engage in a deadly cat-and-mouse game after a one-night stand. Told in six, nonlinear chapters, Strange Darling tells a fast-paced, thrilling story that bends and twists and will have you on the edge of your seat trying to guess what could happen next. Strange Darling is elevated by its two leads: Kyle Gallner as the Demon and Willa Fitzgerald as the Woman and has become one of my favorite watches this year.
With a movie like this, I want to try to avoid anything about the story because the best way to see this is completely blind. I will, however, go on about how incredible Gallner and Fitzgerald are. Kyle Gallner has become a horror darling for me, after appearing in movies like Smile, The Passenger, and Jennifer’s Body. With each role he takes, he excels with his mannerisms. As he is chasing down the Woman, you can tell he’s incredibly poised and experienced, but when things don’t go as planned, he gets emotional. His physicality is perfect for this movie, and he’s the type of actor who gives his all to each role.
Whoever at Miramax wanted to recast Willa Fitzgerald deserves to be fired. Calling this a breakout role is an undersell, she is a showstopper. She carries so much of this movie in her performance in every single aspect. She flips her personas on a dime, she has so much emotion behind her eyes and so many thoughts you can see without her ever saying a word. I can’t say much more without spoiling the plot of the movie but I am so happy director JT Mollner fought to keep her because she was the star of this movie and that is largely why this movie is as successful as it is.
While I won’t go into what the story is about, I will go into how the story is told. I love the nonlinear chapters as a narrative device. It perfectly allows us to bounce from different areas of the story when a new theme becomes relevant. If something is introduced in chapter five, we go back to chapter two to see how it was appropriate to the Woman and the Demon. When we see something shocking in a chapter, we then see how earlier events led us to this moment, completely changing how we previously viewed that current scene. It’s a movie where everything you see is important but you have to be willing to wait to get the full context as to why later.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Strange Darling is a movie I’ve been waiting to see for a while. I was disappointed to see it was only released in select theaters and none near me. But now that it’s available on VOD, I can not recommend this movie enough. It is packed full of twists and turns and incredible performances. If you’re looking for a fun, thrilling movie to watch, Strange Darling should be high on your list.
