Starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles & Chris Pine

Directed by Olivia Wilde

New Line, In Cinemas now

A housewife living with her ambitious husband in a utopian suburb starts to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.

On the face of it, Alice (Florence Pugh) has a perfect life. She has a perfect husband, Jack (Harry Styles), in his perfect job; a perfect house in a perfect 1950s designer suburb; and a perfect set of friends. But within minutes of Don’t Worry Darling kicking into pastel-coloured, retro-soundtrack gear, Alice’s life is shrouded in questions, the most important of which is, ‘can this film be reviewed without spoilers?’. I’ll do my best.

Secondly, why is our heroine called ‘Alice’? And why, get this, is her best friend who she admires, called ‘Bunny’? Alice… and Bunny! Hmmm, let me think about that. Could this possibly be a literary reference of some sort?

Next. Have Kate Silberman and Olivia Wilde ever seen The Stepford Wives, The Truman Show, The Matrix, The Prisoner or just about any film by M. Night Shyamalan? On seeing Don’t Worry Darling, you might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment. Following on from this, is there room in this world for more than one M. Night Shyamalan? Come to think of it, is there room in this world for one M. Night Shyamalan?

But surely the most baffling question of all is: ‘Why is Harry Styles in this film?’ He may be a box-office draw of sorts, but this movie is hardly targeted at the legions of teenage girls who were running excitedly into my local Cineworld last night. I’m a huge fan of Styles the musician – genuinely! – his latest album, Harry’s House, is a tour-de-force of addictive pop. As an actor, I have a vague memory of him being perfectly serviceable in Dunkirk, but as suburban workaholic Jack he is woefully miscast, not least, because, for reasons that make no sense at all, and that undermine the premise of the film, Silberman has written in an excuse for Styles to keep his British, Holmes Chapel accent. Some commentators have accused him of being wooden, but, to be fair, as rock star acting goes, he’s easily up there with David Bowie and Sting…

Florence Pugh does a far more accomplished job, but the question for her is: will she get a special Academy Award for playing the same dramatic beat relentlessly for two hours? On that theme, I read that there was a bidding war for the project, but did no one at New Line notice that it has a story so thin it would barely sustain a forty-minute episode of The Twilight Zone?

As for the film’s resolution… I shall attempt to comment on this without spoilers. Here goes. If the xxx is the xxx it’s supposed to be why does it only look like this particular xxx and why isn’t it a better more competent xxx? As this kind of xxx goes, it’s pretty inept, especially compared to equivalent xxxxx in other xxx movies. You see? Spoiler free.

And as for the film’s more serious themes, there’s an interesting and important idea here, but it plays out like the kind of backstory revelation that had me rolling my eyes and muttering ‘Doh’ in my best Homer Simpson.

Last, but by no means least… Busby Berkeley? Why? There’s a lot of Mr Berkeley referenced in this film, but really, what has Busby Berkeley got to do with anything?

Verdict: Don’t Worry Darling is strangely watchable, but is ultimately daft, repetitive and annoying, nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, and blighted by an unfortunate performance from its painfully miscast male lead. Misfile under M. Night Shyamalan. 3/10

Martin Jameson