Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: In “Strange Darling,” a new crime movie now playing in theatres, nothing is what it seems when a one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.

CAST: Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr. Directed by JT Mollner.

REVIEW: There’s a scene in “Strange Darling” that sees two old hippies doing a puzzle, keeping score for each of the pieces they put in place. It’s a cute and playful scene, but it’s also an apt analogy for the watching of the film. The movie is a puzzle of a sort, a jumble of six chapters, presented out of order, that doles out information like the pieces of a puzzle. Viewers are urged to keep score as they piece together what is going on as the full picture slowly takes shape.

Clever and subversive, writer/director J.T. Mollner’s cat-and-mouse game is an expertly made exercise in nihilism. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD) What begins as a standard serial killer flick—a scared woman on the run from a gun toting stalker—soon widens and deepens to become something else.

Here’s where it becomes spoilerific, so read ahead with caution. I’ll be as careful as possible in making my points about this ingenious cat-and-mouse story, but before you read on, know I think that this movie is best seen with little to no prior knowledge of the plot.

Still curious? Read on.

“Strange Darling” is a Gordian knot, a film that plays our expectations like a drum as Mollner introduces subversive twists and turns that question gender roles.

As the chapters—with names like “Can You Help Me Please? and “Do You Like to Party?”—build up a head of steam and seem about ready to blow apart, Mollner often hits the release valve. Instead of deflating the situations, however, he creates tension with some humour and clever editing.

You’ll wonder what’s real, and what’s not, and it’s hard to know until things get… well, very real. Then, the violence, which had mostly been implied, becomes visceral. Even then, it’s the high voltage charge from principal players Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner that keeps the film interesting, not the violence. Both hand in career best work and keep stride with the film’s exhilarating pace.

“Strange Darling” feels like a throwback. Shot on 35mm, by cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, it has a grindhouse feel, as though it’s visually paying tribute to the aesthetic of the b-crime movies of the 1970s. It begins with a voiceover that sounds borrowed from a 1960s Quinn Martin Production, the broken timeline feels very 1990’s, as do the chapter title cards and Miramax logo, but Mollner’s treatment of the film’s central themes is anything but old fashioned.