Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner

Written and Directed by JT Mollner

Miramax – in cinemas now.

Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.

The problem with twists – especially ones which define the meaning of a film – is that they make the task of reviewing the movie nigh on impossible without spoilers. Indeed just mentioning the twists is a spoiler in itself, but it’s impossible to avoid in any appraisal of JT Mollner’s new horror thriller Strange Darling.

About all I can safely say is that the movie kicks off with Willa Fitzgerald – credited enigmatically as ‘The Lady’ – bleeding and on the run from Kyle Gallner – ‘The Demon’. There’s also a lengthy slate advising us that this will be a dramatization of the last murders by a prolific serial killer. We’re going to be served the story in six chapters, which we soon learn will be doled out in non-chronological order.

On the surface, what follows is a bloody jigsaw puzzle of dislocated story elements, and it would be hard to deny that it makes for an intriguing watch, but I think the structural game playing, whilst entertaining, does inflict some collateral damage along the way.

Bloody psycho thriller aside, Strange Darling is attempting to ask some tricky questions about consent, women and violence, and these fight for space when you’re also trying to unravel the tricksy complexities of the plot. I’d go as far as to say that there is absolutely no way a film like this would get funding in the UK today because anyone working on this side of the pond knows that these are questions that only have one answer (especially if you want a career), whereas what makes Mollner’s picture exciting and gripping is that he’s not joining in with that orthodoxy at all.

Verdict: Weirdly, in the end, for someone working in British screen and broadcast media, the most challenging aspect of this film wasn’t the violence (all of which was efficiently executed) but whether I am ‘allowed’ to say I enjoyed it all. Which I did. Immensely. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com