Strange Darling 4K 2023 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

In rural Oregon, a girl flees from an angry man with a gun.

Review 4K Movie

If Kyle Gallner in recent years has formed an impressive resume of roles of anti-heroes, balancing on the edge of madness with such a sadly splashing in the eyes of romanticism Mickey Knox from “Natural Born Killers”, Willa Fitzgerald as femme fatale and that strange darling from the title of the movie is perceived as a much more unexpected choice. Their characters, named in the credits as “Electric Lady” and “Demon”, are brought together in a cheap motel room not even by lust, but by an inner brokenness that yearns for someone's presence, but makes them wear ugly mirror masks even during maximum intimacy. Filled with intriguing dangerous sexuality, the movie seemingly lays out all the cards already in the first two chapters, while remaining for the viewer as a strange stranger promisingly hinting at a stormy continuation of the night.

Non-linearity of the narrative with pathos division into chapters is only to the benefit of the tape. As in Zack Cregger's beautifully inventive “Barbarian,” the deliberately flamboyant genre templates are skillfully used here to excite the viewer's interest. Bloody “final” girl (the role is very familiar to Willa Fitzgerald) already at the start of the movie runs away from the pursuer on the roads and forests, on these rutted paths genre fans have walked and rushed more than once. And then gradually comes the scraping feeling from those very non-negotiable trips to Thai resorts with friends that you are being cheated somewhere, but you haven't yet figured out where. The movie is not afraid to dare, it is not afraid of its violent eroticism, while scaring the viewer with it. And because of this, it becomes an almost evil neo-noir erotic thriller from the 90s, which Quentin Tarantino and Tobe Hooper kissed on the forehead at birth.

Music here is almost an independent character, invisibly standing behind the main characters, gently pushing them towards each other to see how love hurts. And sometimes it hurts quite bloody. Shot on 35mm, the movie is so juicy and vividly experiments with visual solutions that you expect to see not Robert Deakins, of course, but some strong master behind the camera, but you find the experienced actor Giovanni Ribisi, for whom this work was his debut in such a status. His amazing ability to use the color palette, to develop his decisions unexpectedly right in the course of a scene, to give scenes additional fury and sexuality, and in some places even a pinching sadness (oh, that final scene), gave the film a lot. In this mosaic, it was as if all the pieces fell into place at just the right time period. Little-known director J.T. Mollner, debutant cinematographer Ribisi, indie stars Gallner and Fitzgerald for a few million dollar budget made a movie that's more fun to watch than any three-hundred-million-dollar huge hit of 2024. The control is exhilarating, and Gallner's porn mustache might as well stop your heart.