“Are you a serial killer?” says a woman credited only as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) to the man credited only as The Demon (Kyle Gallner). This may be how Strange Darling opens, but then time moves in mysterious ways here. After all, text also appearing at the beginning informs us that what we are about to see is in fact the not the first but the last days of a pattern killer’s murder spree across America over several years – and then after the film announces itself in a subtitle as “A thriller in six chapters”, the action formally begins not at Chapter One but at Chapter Three, in a narrative that disorients us from the get-go by confounding its own chronology and plunging us in medias res.
The woodland road down which we see the terrified Lady racing, with the Demon chasing her in his pickup, may be relatively straight – indeed straight enough for him to be able to stop his vehicle, climb onto the back and take an accurate shot with a rifle at her car receding into the distance – but this narrative is far from linear, making it hard to see what exactly has led to these desperate straits, or what lies around the next bend.
What is clear is that The Lady is in mortal danger, and as she flees on foot into the woods, bleeding from her injuries, with the armed, coke-snorting Demon in hot pursuit, we are witnessing the sort of cat-and-mouse scenario familiar from a thousand slashers, with the Lady, helpless but resourceful, clearly being set up for the rôle of final girl. Yet as she stumbles to a farmhouse where voices on outdoor speakers discuss the local Bigfoots, and as she is met at the door by an alarmed old couple (Ed Begley Jr., Barbara Hershey) armed with bear spray, there is the sense that anything could happen here, and any genre might come into play.
Even if this film’s subtitle promises a thriller, the title itself suggests a twisted romance of sorts, and writer/director JT Mollner delivers both. For Strange Darling upends expectations, eroticises murder, deconstructs gender norms, and breaks down distinctions between violation and consent, predator and prey, in a topsy-turvy world where sometimes no means yes and a villain can also be a victim.
As the pieces of the narrative puzzle fall into place, a complicated picture emerges of someone reduced to full ‘survival mode’, making the best they can of a situation rapidly spiralling out of their control. Shot in 35mm by DP Giovanni Ribisi, better known as an actor but absolutely in control of his cinematographic craft, this looks utterly beautiful in both its framing and often giallo-esque lighting, while matching the visual grain of the Seventies with a corresponding moral slipperiness, and gathering an ensemble of Oregonian eccentrics who are all living by their own quirk and only accidentally crossing paths with the whirlwind. At its heart is a negotiation between a man and a woman, both strangers and both with secrets, about how far they are willing to go to chase their dark desire.
Strange Darling had its international première at FrightFest 2024, 24 August
