SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Strange Darling,” now playing in theaters. Seriously — there are some great twists in this movie. Go check it out first and then come back to read this!
J.T. Mollner is earning raves for his new thriller “Strange Darling.” However, the writer-director didn’t even feel the need to make a movie unless he could do something unique.
“There are so many great horror films that are better than anything I could ever make because they’re just so perfect, that I felt like unless we could find a different angle and turn things inside out, there’s no reason to do it,” he says. “I was excited because it seemed like, ‘Oh, this is a way to play with people’s expectations and assumptions.'”
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Luckily, Mollner wrote a sexy and shocking script for “Strange Darling,” where the strength lies in manipulating stereotypes audiences have seen in scores of movies before. A beautiful woman covered in blood running from a man with a gun? It must be a predator chasing down his prey. Indelible images like that are artfully woven throughout the film, but this nonlinear feature does its best to keep things off-kilter.
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The plot unfolds during the one-night stand of two characters known as only The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) and The Demon (Kyle Gallner). The character names on title cards at the beginning of the film are one of the first instances of playing on expectations, as well as an early scroll revealing that this is a story about a serial killer. As the pair debate whether or not to head from his truck into a cheap hotel room for some late-night fun, the camera passes over the hidden barrel of a literal Chekhov’s gun. Once they head inside and get undressed, they engage in some very rough foreplay, and your breath catches, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Drop it does, as it’s revealed that The Lady is actually the serial killer, but before she can kill The Demon, he lets off a shot from his gun, and after both parties stagger around losing blood, he begins to chase her down for retribution. Much like the audience, The Lady convinces the residents of the small Oregon town she’s running through to help her out — but if they ask too many questions, they too are at risk.
The twists continue deep into the final act of the movie, and Mollner says the major reason he was able to successfully surprise the audience is because of the performance of his leads.
“I talked to Willa and Kyle about always playing to the truth, the emotional truths of their characters and not paying any attention to performing in a way that would misdirect the audience,” he says. “They’re both great actors and we’ll worry about misdirection in the framework of the story and the way the narrative is told. If you go back and watch the movie, their performances feel honest and people aren’t feeling like they’re being lied to. I believe that’s why it’s working for so many people.”
Beyond the script and performances, Mollner also wanted the look of the film to play with audiences’ expectations and create a more immersive experience. Actor Giovanni Ribisi made his debut as a feature cinematographer on the project, which was shot on 35mm film. The duo, along with production designer Priscilla Elliott, looked at films like David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” as inspiration to use color in dynamic ways.
“We wanted the candy-coated saturated look that also had some grain,” Mollner says. “We were really in the mood to use color as a weapon. I went back the other day and watched ‘Cries and Whispers.’ That movie is so beautifully shot. The reds are so big and vibrant, so there’s always this sense of dread bubbling beneath the surface of beauty. We talked about ‘blood on the flower bed’ as our mission statement. That’s what we wanted this movie to be. We wanted it to pop and be one of those things that you can’t forget how it looks and how it makes you feel.”
Ultimately, The Lady’s journey comes to an end in two fateful car rides. In the first, the police realize she’s the serial killer, and she admits that she murders people who appear to her as demons, explaining both her motivation and earlier discomfort in murdering people just to get out of sticky situations. The way the admission is shot teases that a police officer, who she quickly kills, may in fact present himself to her as a demon. While Mollner won’t directly confirm or deny the possibility that The Lady is actually a self-appointed demon slayer, he does say it adds an important layer to her psyche.
“The idea was to create a serial killer who’s not a sociopath, necessarily,” he says. “She has other issues but does feel remorse and compelled to do these things, but feels bad about doing them. There’s a justification for it, and there are all kinds of different motivations rooted in some sort of mental illness if you’re killing people. But we wanted to make sure that there was humanity in both characters. Even though they’re doing awful things at times, we wanted to make sure we were showing their perspective and point of view.”
The last point of view in the film is a sustained shot of The Lady, who is killed by a ride-offering armed local after she flashes a gun too recklessly. Holding on to Fitzgerald for minutes as the life drains out of her character, it’s a stark and emotional end to this whiplash of a movie.
“The emotional ending was pretty much the same from the beginning, but as far as how it physically ended, that scene was not in there,” Mollner says. “We decided to put that in there around the third or fourth draft and have a locked-off shot for three minutes or however long it ends up being. It was a big goal of mine to make sure we were able to achieve it, and it was probably the most difficult thing we did because we were racing against time and light and only got to try it twice. But she’s so good that it worked — it has so much to do with Willa’s ability to hold the screen and demand your attention because she’s so charismatic. We didn’t shoot any other way, we didn’t shoot any reverse shots there. We didn’t give ourselves any safety net.”
