Innovative serial killer thriller Strange Darling messes with genre perceptions and gender dynamics to create an electric horror story of hunter and prey delivered by an exciting new filmmaking talent in JT Mollner.
“You know how many risks a woman like me takes when she agrees to have some fun?”
The link between sex and violence has always been intimate with many serial killers driven by a twisted sense of the former in their brutal application of the latter. Gender dynamics is also important in this macabre dance of death, with so many women slain and/or abused at the hands of psychotic men that the emergence of a female serial killer is as rare as witnessing a corpse flower bloom.
With Strange Darling, however, director and writer JT Mollner reminds that we are all human despite the differences between men and women: we love, we hate, we will all die, and some among us will kill.
Sweet Darling begins with the forever underappreciated Jason Patric narrating an opening crawl that brings us up to speed regarding one of “the most prolific and unique serial killers of the 21st century”. This is followed by bloody and wounded Willa Fitzgerald’s “The Lady” on the run from Kyle Gallner’s armed and dangerous “The Demon”. Through a series of six non-sequential chapters, we learn how a hook-up between these two led to a high-stakes pursuit of hunter and prey that is riveting in all its facets.
With Sweet Darling, Mollner pulls off something of a miracle in his ability to deliver a fresh and exciting take on an over-represented sub-genre of horror/thriller film, with his excellent writing and unconventional story structure reminding somewhat of early Quentin Tarantino (without the eye-rolling response to such a comparison.)
Mollner delves into his deep bag of filmmaking tricks and skills to deliver a tapestry of terror ranging from smooth as silk tracking shots to beautifully framed wide shots. Shot on 35mm film there is a vibrancy to Strange Darling that simply pops with cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi (yes, the famed actor) capturing the varied tones of blue and red featured throughout the film.
As the “Lady” and “Demon” (respectively), Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner deliver exceptional performances. Fitzgerald is especially excellent in her portrayal of savagery and fragility inhabiting the same warped mind, Fitzgerald’s handle of her character’s wide-ranging emotional and psychological palate matched by an electric screen presence.
Serial killer movies are often a-dime-a-dozen, yet occasionally an outlier (Seven, The Silence of the Lambs) resuscitates these most macabre murder stories. Strange Darling is the latest film to do just that.
