In much of the movie Do not worry deardirected by Olivia Wilde, Alice (Florence Pugh) looks uncomfortable. As much as for your perfect home life be an unbreathable space. It seems to become smaller, limited and crystallized in a kind of impeccable stamp. The film, which opens in theaters on September 23, strives to make it clear that the character enjoys the privilege of a loving home, a bright future and the possibility of a perfect life.
But this snapshot of ideal domestic life is so flimsy as to wobble conspicuously quickly. Wilde shows a perfect world, albeit full of cracks, and has serious difficulties narrating its premise. At least, to delve into it without making the secret it tries to hide obvious.
It’s inevitable that Alice seems like a prop, while her husband Jack (Harry Styles) watches her from a more than suspicious distance. “We have a great job, making our husbands happy, helping them succeed,” says Bunny (Olivia Wilde), Alice’s beaming neighbor. Another dazzling piece on the big stage of a flawless reality.
Do not worry dear
The film does not keep its secrets with enough skill to hide them in increasingly singular images of everyday life. That’s despite the director digging deeper into the premise with malicious skill. The artificial sobriety of the colorful houses of a nightmarish town is transformed into an unhealthy setting. The ever-bright sun is a constant, inexplicable presence. Olivia Wilde opts for a certain dreamlike, unreal air, which slides towards the fearsome.
Do not worry deara place where perfection is possible
“We’ve created perfection. Symmetry, order, is everything in every system,” explains Frank (Chris Pine). The character is the architect of the mysterious company that supports Victory, the exemplary and neat town that the characters enjoy. “It’s the only way to get the most out of it,” he adds.
The small population of radiant men and women of Do not worry dear, to whom he gave work and a place in the world, looks at him with devotion. They are destined to change the future, to maintain hope in a hostile world. Of course, only if they keep their enigmas safely tucked away under the impeccable guise of placid prosperity.
But the production lacks the ability to explore the dark spots of the psychological thriller it hints at. The script, by Katie Silberman and Carey Van Dykee, fails to create the tense and dangerous atmosphere that the rigid visual section requires. The camera carefully follows Alice in a day to day in which each element and event is held in perfection.
Very bright days, a luxurious house with impeccable floors and furniture. The feeling that time runs through the narrative like a blurred presence. Is it the amiable fifties, an earlier time? Or a barely outlined future that reflects — and most of the time, ineffectively — something more disturbing? In Do not worry dearthe neat images hint at a hidden threat, but the plot turns the warning into a direct statement.
What hides behind beauty
As a director, Wilde has a more than evident talent for crafting a story with careful pace and tone. At the same time, to use sinister touches to suggest what is happening in the background of the stylized scenes of Do not worry dear. In fact, the point of greatest interest in the production is how the director manages to avoid the obvious underlying message of the plot.
Over and over again, Alice and Jack’s house becomes a claustrophobic set of spaces. The walls seem to become huge or the corridors endless. Between both, the characters are hostages or, in any case, almost spectral figures that move from one side to another with a strict severity.
What exactly is going on between this young couple? Wilde struggles to detail the awkwardness of the silences, of the strangely smiling faces of his characters. The dark perception that all his flawless youthful brilliance hides a bitter element. What moves on the limits of history and is barely glimpsed at times?
An unrefined argument
The question arises immediately and the answer comes too soon. In fact, is answered, with red herrings of worrying clumsinessin the first twenty minutes. The script, which tries to develop as best it can the notion of paranoia around what seems like a domestic drama, fails.
Do not worry dear does not keep his secrets skillfully enough to hide them in increasingly singular images of everyday life. That’s despite the director digging deeper into the premise with malicious skill. The artificial sobriety of the colorful houses is transformed into an unhealthy setting. The ever-bright sun is a constant, inexplicable presence. Wilde opts for a certain dreamlike, unreal air, which slides towards the fearsome.
Alice begins to contemplate what is happening around her with suffocating anguish. Did it rave? Is there a crack in that flow of time in which each element occupies a specific place? For Alice, the feeling of fear turns to suspicion. Is Jack lying? Is it possible that everyone around you is lying in one way or another? Slowly, the premise of a world within another world is easily revealed. So excessive that it hampers the film’s ability to construct an alternate reality. Make it believable, substantial or with enough impact to sustain the knot of the narrative.
A poorly executed narrative experiment
One of the saddest points of Do not worry dear it is that it immediately loses its effectiveness as a gigantic trap. Alice’s account, that she doubts her mind, of what she can see and touch, of the conclusions she draws by simple verification, is suddenly distorted.
The argument is unable to play with the pieces at its disposal and collapses in a second act in which the whole atmosphere takes on a tone of unnecessary urgency. Wilde strives to make the film a magnificent vision of unsettling half-discovered horrors. But the script fails again by finishing all the narrative lines he suggested.
The narration is not skillful enough to provide a believable insight into the unreal as it attempts to portray it. In an attempt to emulate the stark reality punch of The Truman Show, Wilde plays with the idea of a stage superimposed on the everyday. But the script is too soft to support a narrative twist of such caliber and the film leaves its most obvious obsessions unfinished.
Soon, the film adds an unnecessary poorly executed social commentary, which makes the premise move away from the center of the mystery. In an attempt to create layers of depth, Do not worry dear ends up being a nonsense in the essence of his story. The film subverts the conspiracy atmosphere it carefully constructed and gives in to a twisted conclusion of hasty revelations. The supposed macabre mechanism that it shows is eroded until it loses all its substance in the third installment, whose final scenes border on the ridiculous.
Finally, Do not worry dear it is a mechanism that fails due to its inconsistency. Also, a superficial reflection of subjects in which he has no interest in scrutinizing. With its brilliant guise as a sinister trap, the film is just a foreshadowing of a more complex conflict that never develops.