Strange Darling is a curious and somewhat fascinating film that weaponizes our empathy and compassion as movie goers. Much in the same way one of the characters turns those traits on other people in the movie itself. It’s an odd film designed to fool us and use what we know about movie language to its benefit.

The film begins halfway through the story as a woman is being chased through the woods by a man with a rifle. The film then flashes back and forth through time in order to fill in the blanks and explain what’s going on.

And, to be honest, its flashback structure wasn’t working for me at first. Neither its action-packed first sequence or the dialog heavy sequence that follows really tells us anything. And that feeling of being unmoored in the plot takes a long time to settle in and I wasn’t too keen on it.

But once we get around to key moments in the narrative, things start to finally click and that’s when I realized the game the movie was playing. And I started to enjoy it… especially when a character turns into to a stabhappy lunatic and the kind of movie we’re really in becomes clear.

The flick makes use of extended takes in a similar way to In a Violent Nature from earlier this year. It’s an interesting way to tell a story – in both cases – at their own pace. This film is a lot more audience-friendly than Violent Nature though… but it still might aggravate people who have little patience for their art-house game.

I wished I liked this film more but its intentional storytelling method, while ultimately successful, still took some patience to get through. I can’t love the movie but I enjoyed it and the acting and the wicked characters the longer it went.

Score: 83