Strange Darling would like you to notice its construction. Proudly opening with a title card informing the audience that everything they’re about to witness was shot on 35mm, the movie has only shown you a couple of hyper-saturated frames before more text interrupts the proceedings. No, we’re not talking about the brief crawl of ‘real life’ backstory that’s prerequisite in the serial killer genre; the more pertinent information comes a moment later, when we discover that the movie will be unveiled in six chapters, starting with the fourth. It’s an awful lot of housekeeping for a flick that promises naughty thrills and titillation, but writer/director JT Mollner wants to make sure you’re paying attention to the scaffolding he’s lovingly erected. Perhaps he knows that the building’s foundation is a little bit shaky.

Following Longlegs, its mass murdering companion 2024 piece, all the way up to rural Oregon, Strange Darling opens in calamitous media res, with a woman, bloodied and harried in monochromatic attire, on the run. Her pursuant, sweating maniacally behind the wheel of a hulking truck, gives equally frantic chase, and though the throbbing music and abrasive camera movements push the viewer straight to the edge of their seat, resolution is far off in the distance. In its place comes clarity, arriving in the form of six subsequent chapters (of course there’s an epilogue!), charting the meet cute, hotel tryst, and violent fall out experienced by characters we know only as The Lady (Ella Fitzgerald) and The Demon (Kyle Gallner). After all, who needs names when you’re only here to get after it?

   If you’re smelling more than a slight whiff of Tarantino, you’re not alone. Though Quentin’s fondness for jumbled chronology and B-movie reference points is perhaps the most thoroughly pilfered affectation in all of cinema, Strange Darling feels indebted to the point of copyright infringement. There are certainly worse filmmakers to idolize, and those in need of a seedy mix of style, sex, word play and melee will likely be satiated by what Mollner has on offer. The damning offense here isn’t plagiarism so much as a misplaced belief in the ability of technique to obfuscate content. While Tarantino’s films receive an extra shot of adrenaline from their cattywampus timelines, their plots are dense and engaging enough to be played straight down the middle. Strange Darling owes every bit of its shock and awe to the counter-intuitive blueprint; a straight-forward version of the same story probably wouldn’t have been greenlit.

That theoretical lack of fiscal backing would cite not only the absence of an involving forward thrust, but also the film’s troubling gender dynamics. Movies can and should test the boundaries of good taste, but anyone who had even the smallest gripe with Gone Girl’s social politics will be pulling their hair out during this one. That film’s devious underbelly was supported by layers of consideration and hard-won contradiction, absolving itself from bad-faith readings by virtue of thoughtful construction. While there’s no point in affixing a political agenda to what Mollner has created, he certainly leaves it open to the worst kind of interpretation. All this roundabout finger wagging is of course an attempt not to spoil what the flick ultimately has up its sleeve. After all, there’d hardly be a movie here without a twist to give it some pop.  

Otherwise it would be up to the cast to provide all the firepower, though with Fitzgerald on hand, there’s a chance that would have been enough. As enticing in her flirtations as she is scorching in both flight and fight, the actress turns what is essentially a two-hander with Gallner into a showcase of her imposing power and skill, blowing him off the screen in every scene they share. Her feral rage is a force to be reckoned with, and if Strange Darling was as formidable as its star, it might have turned Fitzgerald into a household name. As is, it plays almost like an audition reel for better, thicker material for her to chew through. It’s no faint praise to liken her performance to Mia Goth’s in Pearl, but there we go again with the comparisons. Mollner’s film has a way of constantly juxtaposing itself against others of the recent past, and the results are less than inspiring.

Strange Darling’s final frames even seem to reference the closing shot of Ti West’s 2022 chiller, though the pathos of Goth staring into the camera for what feels like a lifetime are missing here, replaced with mimicry. It’s still easy on the eyes, and as corny as that opening boast is, there’s little denying the film’s visual accolades. Though often trained on blistering colors of upheaval and carnage, the most appealing images here come in a pair of softer moments; a coquettish interaction between the two leads in the cerulean front seat of a car after sundown, and the genuinely hilarious morning routine of a brutally under-utilized couple played by Barbara Hershey and Ed Bagely Jr. These passages suggest a calmer, more seductive feature, one in which swoony lulls might have aided in ratcheting up the tension by wrong-footing the audience into a sense of peace. Mollner simply doesn’t have the patience, and is too invested in his formal choices to allow anything like humanity to impede. Enjoy the lattice work if you can, because this one is heavy on form, and light on function.