STRANGE DARLING (2024) – A strange indie horror thriller that will surprise you
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Here is one of the year’s most original thrillers. It has a tight running time of just over one and a half hours and tells the story of what happens in a one-night stand where one of the people involved turns out to be a demented serial killer. This turns rapidly into a chase movie that keeps heaping one twist after another while with the body count increasing. What makes this familiar sounding premise stand out and different is how director and writer JT Mollner tells the story which is divided into 6 chapters. However, instead of a straightforward sequential unfolding of the chapters, the chapters are presented in a non-chronological order! The film kicks off with Chapter 3 where we see our two main characters already think in a chase sequence!
To JT Mollner’s credit, this is only his sophomore effort and already he is displaying a style that is unique and self-assured. This is what independent movies used to look and feel like back in the 1990’s when indie movies were in their prime. Typically shot with a limited budget and with an unknown cast, these films stand out with their unique and unpredictable storylines. The raw acting talents from a cast of unknowns comes across as feeling very authentic, and we are often left guessing who is going to be bumped off or who is the good guy or bad guy. Strange Darling does that extremely well. The ingenious jumbling up of the sequences makes us draw conclusions and perceptions about the characters prematurely, before seeing the full picture. This is the game changer and succeeds in making what would otherwise be probably a mundane thriller about a serial killer on a murder spree, come across very engaging while keeping the viewers guessing.
To fully enjoy this movie, you should go in totally oblivious to what the film is about so my apologies if I have said too much here but I am consciously not providing any details here. Much of the film’s success also comes from the intensity and credibility of the performances from its two main stars, actress Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner. Perhaps the only familiar face in the cast is Barbara Hershey in a small but pivotal supporting role. Barbara’s film career peaked in the 1980’s and 1990’s and she naturally have aged a lot since then making her quite unrecognizable here. All in all, you are probably not going to see any thrill rides quite like Strange Darling this year, so this low key and little unknown movie is quite a pleasant surprise and treat.