'Strange Darling' movie review: A thriller to die for

While it begins as a cat-and-mouse thriller, Strange Darling evolves (and genre-bends) into a psychological quasi-horror that keeps you guessing.

Strange Darling is frenetic maximalist romp that murders your expectations at every turn. With its saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score rattling, it feels like you're on the fury road—and you might as well be. A pitch-black devilishly entertaining homage to 70s exploitation thrillers that will have you begging for more.

Strange Darling is in theaters now.

The title card for Strange Darling splashes onto the screen paired with the subtitle “a thriller in six chapters” before cheekily jumping to chapter 3. From that moment on director J.T. Toller keeps you guessing as he grabs you by your collar and takes you on a frenetic maximalist romp. When you think it is going to zig, it zags. When you think it's going to jump, it soars. The opening chapters of the movie, shot in glorious 35mm by Giovanni Rabisi, are an assault on the senses. With saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score thrumming it feels like you're on the fury road—and you might as well be.

While the opening credits roll, our protagonist simply known as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) runs across a field. Her blond hair is flattened by sweat, a bloody bandage covers her ear and she looks like she's seen the devil himself. That's apt considering her pursuer is billed as The Devil (Kyle Gallner). Chapter 3 starts with a title card that tells us that the movie is a dramatization of the final string of murders of an infamous serial killer stalking rural America. Every detail of Strange Darling down to the film grain evokes a 70s exploitation thriller—think Quentin Tarantino's own homages like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction—complete with all its glorious bloody violence and action. It isn't until we see a vape and cell phone that we feel like it's within our timeline.

Gallner's silent, motivated and precise characterization gives his character a mystical patina. Not unlike the iconic supernatural inhuman slasher villains of the time period—Michael Myers, eat your heart out. On the other end of his silver shotgun is Fitzgerald's classic-in-the-making scream queen performance that has you genuinely terrified for her. The cat-and-mouse sequence that lasts just ten minutes, but feels like a lifetime, has everything from a car chase and crash, game of hide-and-seek in the woods and a horrifying wound sterilization. The tension is nearly unbearable.

That carries into chapter five that brings the chase into a mountain house before smashing back to chapter one. With each subsequent chapter, Toller gives you just enough information to change the field of play—because at its core Strange Darling is about two people at play with each other even if it is a sadistic game. To talk about Strange Darling without ruining its devilish entertaining magic would be a fool's errand. But know, that nothing is as it seems—even the movie. With shades of an erotic thriller, slasher, crime caper and even satirical comedy, there truly isn't a way to pin it down other than watching it.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.