| Strange DarlingA motel hookup puts a woman in grave danger. “There’s a reason why Stephen King has called it a masterpiece,” said Cary Darling in the San Francisco Chronicle. Strange Darling, which can be honestly described as a serial-killer romance, turns out to be “not only one of the most striking films of the summer, but of the year.” Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner co-star as apparent strangers who’ve come together for a night of sexual roughhousing. But viewers are kept off balance by a screenplay that shuffles the sequence of its six short chapters, opening with a scene in which a bloodied Fitzgerald is already running from a gun-toting Gallner. We know we’re watching the last days of a serial killer’s spree, said Thomas Floyd in The Washington Post, but to share more of the plot “would spoil the pleasures of a narrative that wields its nonlinear approach as not a gimmick but a rich exercise in shattering preconceptions.” Writer-director JT Mollner has crafted an “altogether audacious” cat and mouse, Fitzgerald’s performance is stunning, and actor Giovanni Ribisi, making his feature debut in this off-screen role, turns out to be “a heck of a cinematographer.” While the film “puts an emphasis on style,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast, its showy devices always serve the cause of suspense. And when the movie’s mysteries are all resolved, you’ll still be unsettled by its “bracingly bleak outlook on the possibility of honesty, communion, and escape.” |
A motel horror masterpiece, a wedding turns deadly, and Nat Turner’s rebellion
