JT Mollner’s Strange Darling is a movie that came out of nowhere in late-August and made a huge impression. It’s a wild film, a serial killer story told in an unconventional manner, featuring dynamite performances from a pair of previously unheralded performers. And it features great-looking 35mm photography from Giovanni Ribisi, who’s been around as an actor since he was a kid but with Strange Darling, is lensing a film for the first time at 49.
He and Mollner have made a movie with a look that’s stylish and every bit as inventive about the serial killer genre as Longlegs, which was also shot on 35, earlier this summer. David Lynch and David Cronenberg are clear influences. Mollner, a former actor whose first feature was the 2016 Western Outlaws and Angels, has broken through with his sophomore film. He’s also the only prominent director who spends part of each year running a haunted house attraction, which his family owns in the Las Vegas area.
Strange Darling is a violent cat-and-mouse thriller that depicts the endgame of a serial killer who terrorized the Northwest. The killer, known as “The Demon” (Kyle Gallner), is fictional but incorporates aspects of real-life serial killers. The story’s told in six chapters, which are presented out of order, although not in a way that makes it feel like a rip-off of Pulp Fiction. It’s set in an undetermined decade but resembles the 1970s, with a cover of “Love Hurts,” appropriately, popping up repeatedly on the soundtrack. It’s well-performed by the singer Z Berg, who performs songs throughout.
The two major characters are called only “The Demon” and “The Girl,” with the latter played by a revelatory Willa Fitzgerald. Their relationship defies easy categorization: are they a couple on a date? An abuser and his victim? Co-conspirators? How you view them will change as the movie goes on.
Something I appreciate about the film is that descriptors like “twisty thriller that will keep you guessing” have a specific connotation, but Strange Darling doesn’t feel anything like that. There are twists, but they’re not cheap, and this is a film that’s much more about the performances and the atmosphere than plot machinations.
Kyle Gallner starred in last year’s raucous Dinner in America, and Willa Fitzgerald is probably best known from the Reacher TV show on Prime Video. Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey round out the cast as a hippie couple with the misfortune to run into the killer. It might resemble something from A24 or Neon, but Strange Darling comes from a newish distributor called Magenta Light Studios. After debuting at Fantastic Fest last year, it arrives in theaters this week and has the makings of a sleeper hit.