SPOILER WARNING AHEAD!
Don’t Worry Darling was released on September 23rd. The movie follows Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Harry Styles) in a town called Victory. At first, nothing suggests that anything is off about the town. All the people are happy and everything is perfect. Alice goes on with her daily life without a care in the world, her only job is to take care of her husband. While at a party that their neighbor Frank throws, their former, Margaret unexpectedly shows up. The people in the town claim she has gone “crazy” but Margaret had figured out the truth about Frank’s secret: Victory is not real.
After an encounter with Margaret, Alice begins to have doubts about what is going on; she then sees a plane crash in the far distance. Alice went to help the people who were on the plane. Instead of finding the plane, she finds the Victory Headquarters. Victory Headquarters is forbidden because if you touch the glass, you would be logging off from Victory and rejoining the real world.
Since Alice touched the Victory Headquarters glass she has memories of before she was forced into the simulation. She begins to lose her mind encountering detailed flashbacks from her time with Jack outside Victory. These flashbacks repeat throughout the movie creating this eerie feeling that the Victory Project is not what it seems.
A scene that was executed very well in the movie is the one where Alice’s neighbors and Frank join her for dinner. As Alice tries to explain to the others everything wrong with Victory such as the fact that everyone there is from the same place, meets their spouse the same way, and all had the same destination for their honeymoon. Her plan fails because Frank manipulates everyone into making them think Alice is crazy and speaking nonsense. Alice tries again to bring the truth out of Frank but it’s too late as everyone exits the room calling her crazy. Once everyone is gone Alice begs Jack to leave with her and he agrees just to backstab her. He takes her to electroshock therapy, making her forget her memories once again. Once done with her treatment she comes back feeling “normal.”
Alice then starts to go back to her housewife routine but is interrupted when Jack starts humming. His humming triggers her memory of how Jack forced her into the simulation taking her freedom. The viewers and Alice then find out that everything is fake, Jack had volunteered to be a part of the Victory Project which is a simulation controlling the people in it. Every day when Jack is going to work he is exiting Victory and works in the outside world, while Alice has to stay inside the simulation.
Jack tells Alice that she was never actually happy in the real world, so that’s why he forced her to be in the simulation. Alice is mad that Jack took her freedom and shares that she was perfectly fine working long hours at the hospital because that was her choice. They get into an argument that ends up with Alice killing Jack in the simulation meaning that he is now dead in the real world.
The movie ends with a very climactic scene of Alice reaching the headquarters as officers from Victory chase her, trying to stop her from escaping Victory. The viewer is left with a cliffhanger not knowing if Alice escaped. The final scene is an exhausted gasp escaping from Alice as if she had just woken up from the simulation. It was a good ending leaving viewers to create their theories of what could occur.
There was a lot of foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie that adds up to the end, allowing the viewer to connect the dots the second time they watch it. Overall, Don’t Worry Darling was a thrilling and suspenseful movie that builds to a great ending. We rate it a solid 8.8/10.
