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Everything We Know

Everything we know about don't worry darling, we dig into all the details of olivia wilde's mysterious sophomore directorial effort starring florence pugh, harry styles, and chris pine..

TAGGED AS: Film , movies , psychological thriller , thriller

What is the Victory Project? If the characters in Olivia Wilde’ s upcoming psychological thriller were to ask about the truth behind this seemingly picture-perfect bit of 1950s American suburbia, the response they would likely get is the title of the film: “ Don’t Worry Darling .”

Luckily, we aren’t about to dismiss your questions about Wilde’s new movie ahead of its theatrical premiere this fall, so here’s everything we know about Don’t Worry Darling .

It’s Olivia Wilde’s Second Feature Film as Director

(Photo by Francois Duhamel/©Annapurna Pictures)

Olivia Wilde got her start as an actress, appearing on TV in the medical drama House and in films like Tron: Legacy , Cowboys & Aliens , and Drinking Buddies , but she’s demonstrated a real talent as a director, too. Her directorial debut, 2019’s female-focused high school buddy comedy Booksmart , was widely acclaimed. Don’t Worry Darling does not appear to be the heartfelt, feel-good romp that Booksmart was, though, and it will be interesting to see how Wilde handles this new genre. She has genre experience in her filmography, and she’s proved that she has the potential to be a great director.

When Wilde announced Don’t Worry Darling as her next project in August 2019, 18 different studios engaged in a bidding war, with New Line Cinema ultimately winning. Warner Bros. is distributing the film.

The Plot Feels Like The Truman Show Meets The Matrix Meets The Manhattan Project

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Unlike so many movies these days, Don’t Worry Darling is not a remake, nor is it based on any pre-existing book, comic, or other known property. The script that would eventually become Don’t Worry Darling was written by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke , and it earned a spot on 2019’s Black List — an annual round-up of acclaimed and buzzed-about screenplays that haven’t been produced yet. Katie Silberman , who wrote the screenplay for Booksmart , did a rewrite of the script and wrote the final screenplay.

Here is the official synopsis for Don’t Worry Darling :

“Alice and Jack are lucky to be living in Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in paradise?”

(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Speaking at CinemaCon in April 2022, Wilde gave some indication of what sort of vibe people could expect from the film. According to Variety, the story was inspired by movies like Inception , The Matrix , and The Truman Show .

“Imagine a life where you have everything you could want. Not just material, tangible things… like a beautiful house, perfect weather and gorgeous cars. But also the things that really matter, like true love or the perfect partner or real trusted friendships and a purpose that feels meaningful,” Wilde said at CinemaCon. “What would it take for you to give up that life, that perfect life. What are you really willing to sacrifice to do what’s right?” Wilde asked. “Are you willing to dismantle the system that’s designed to serve you?”

The first and, so far, only trailer for the movie premiered in early May. It’s an effective, eerie trailer that offers a good sense of what the vibe of the movie will be without spoiling too much in terms of plot. The swingin’ party at the beginning and the chic ‘50s aesthetics all look quite nice, but they soon give way to ominous threats, a sense of unease, and building action as it becomes clear that this is not just a normal period piece. Something is very, very wrong in Victory.

The Cast Features Big Names and Rising Stars

Florence Pugh ( Black Widow ) stars as Alice, the wife who seems to be asking too many questions about the Victory Project. Opposite her is Harry Styles , who is best known for the band One Direction but who has since made successful forays into acting, appearing in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and the post-credits sequence of Marvel’s Eternals . Styles plays Jack, Alice’s husband and an employee who works on the Victory Project.

In addition to directing, Wilde appears in the movie herself, playing Bunny, another one of the wives who live in Victory. Gemma Chan ( Eternals ), KiKi Layne ( The Old Guard ), and ​​ Kate Berlant , a comedian who has had small roles in movies like Sorry to Bother You and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood , also appear to be playing wives. Sydney Chandler, actress and daughter of Kyle Chandler, stars as well.

Chris Pine ( Wonder Woman ) plays Frank, who seems to be a higher-up at the company behind the Victory Project, and he menaces Alice at one point in the trailer. Nick Kroll ( Big Mouth ), Douglas Smith ( Big Love ), Ari’el Stachel ( The Band’s Visit ), Asif Ali, and Timothy Simons ( Veep ) also star.

Filming Wrapped in February 2021, But Was Delayed Due to COVID

Filming for Don’t Worry Darling began in October 2020 and concluded in February of 2021. It was halted for two weeks in November when somebody on the set tested positive for COVID-19. In an Instagram post celebrating the end of filming, Pugh went to great lengths to praise everybody who worked on the movie for getting it made despite the ongoing pandemic.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLSE6F9F_vv/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=50556787-4d96-46d0-a5cb-20e64db4d3de

This Movie Is Why Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles Are Dating

(Photo by Neil Mockford/Getty Images)

Don’t Worry Darling is a notable movie for fans of celebrity gossip, because Olivia Wilde and leading man Harry Styles started dating after they met while making the movie. According to Us Weekly , the pair hit it off almost immediately and made the relationship public in January of last year. Wilde had previously been engaged to Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis , with whom she has two children, but they broke off their engagement in November 2020. Styles is reportedly not the cause of the split.

During Wilde’s presentation at CinemaCon, somebody got on the stage and handed her an envelope. It was later revealed that she had, in fact, been served child custody papers. Sudeikis said he was unaware the papers would be delivered like that.

Don’t Worry Darling opens in theaters everywhere on September 23, 2022.

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Disney Reboots Iconic Animated Classic ‘Fantasia’ With Harry Styles

in Merchandise

The 1940 animated musical classic Fantasia is getting a second life, this time with British singer/actor Harry Styles.

Fantasia is one of the odder entries in the Walt Disney Animation canon, which is saying a lot. It is often forgotten that the wildly ambitious film was only the third movie released by the company, following Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940. Although those films are undeniable landmarks of animation and film history, they both also basically took a public-domain fairy tale, added songs and cute animal characters, and went on to critical acclaim (though Pinocchio took a while to turn a profit).

Related: Disney Store Releases Exclusive Holiday Pieces for 2024

Fantasia , on the other hand, is a whole different beast. The film is composed of eight entirely separate animated sequences set to classical music; the majority of the films do not feature popular Disney characters, the exception being Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment. The movie was a huge technological advancement for the medium and a precursor to surround sound; it involved literally hundreds of detailed hand-painted animated characters; it required a multiplane camera to be constructed specifically for the production and resulted in more footage than Snow White and Pinocchio combined.

As you might expect from all this lead-up, it was a huge commercial flop at the time. It has since become a hugely significant part of Disney lore and history, but it took a long time for the company to recoup costs. It also has never been able to launch a proper sequel that garnered the critical acclaim of the original or make a significant cultural impact, though the original is now a touchstone of theme parks and company iconography.

That iconography has now been passed to Harry Styles, former member of One Direction and star of films like Don’t Worry Darling (2022) and My Policeman (2022). More importantly, like all significant pop stars these days, he is the owner of a unisex “lifestyle brand” that produces clothing, cosmetics, and skin products: Pleasing .

According to Women’s Wear Daily , Disney and Pleasing are collaborating for a new collection of items inspired by Fantasia . For example, the Harry Styles brand will offer a black hoodie featuring Sorcerer Mickey waving his wand and a crew-neck sweater with a Hyacinth Hippo (those are the tutu ones).

Additionally, the Fantasia Pleasing collaboration will offer three nail polish sets, a new flavor of the Big Lip HA Moisture Balm and Buttercream, and over a dozen items of apparel, bags, journals, towels, and other accessories.

Related: Disney Store Launches “Shining, Shimmering, Splendid” Loungefly Collection

Pleasing’s creative director, Harry Lambert, describes the new collection, saying, “From very early on, Fantasia was always in the front of our minds at Pleasing. The aesthetics, the mood, the bold illustrations, the colors, and, ultimately, the epic world that Disney has created were very much a world that resonated with Pleasing. Fantasia feels very similar in terms of its overall aesthetic and musical influence — it just felt right for us.”

The collab will officially be released on disneystore.com and pleasing.com on October 4. Pre-launch events will take place beginning September 28 at Disney Springs and select Disney stores and Pleasing pop-ups. As of publication time, there is no word whether Pleasing will next be working on a collaboration involving Harry Styles’ Eternals (2021) character, Prince Eros .

What do you think of this Fantasia line?

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Don’t Worry Darling, it’s exactly what you think

Olivia Wilde’s glossy thriller sports Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, but it’s undone by unsubtlety

by Oli Welsh

During the infamous Venice film festival press conference for Don’t Worry Darling , pop dreamboat and aspirant actor Harry Styles described his new star vehicle thus: “My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a... like a movie. It feels like a real, you know, go-to-the-theater film movie.” A clip of his co-star Chris Pine appearing to lose his grip on reality while Styles said these words went viral, and — not for the first, or last, time in Don’t Worry Darling ’s cursed press tour — Styles found himself the butt of the internet’s jokes.

The thing is, having now seen the film, I know what Harry was saying. Don’t Worry Darling , directed by Olivia Wilde and also starring Florence Pugh, really is a go-to-the-theater film movie. It’s full of hot famous people wearing immaculate clothes. It looks sleek and sounds loud and enveloping. It’s got a little bit of sex, a little bit of mystery, and a little bit of action. It takes a big swing at a big, dumb idea, aiming to smack it all the way up into the cheap seats. It’s not very clever and not wholly successful, but it is the kind of bold, brassy, high-concept studio thriller we don’t get so often these days. (At least, I think that’s what Harry was trying to say.)

In that context, the cyclone of gossip that has preceded its release feels like part of the experience, or at least consistent with it: a decadent, glossy tableau of turn-of-the-millennium celebrity culture. But happily, we can leave all mention of the scandal there. If there were troubles on set or discord among the cast, it doesn’t show in the finished product, which is slick, and conspicuously well made — if not well thought out.

Don’t Worry Darling is set in a 1950s corporate idyll. Alice (Pugh) and Jack (Styles) are a besotted young couple living in a modular, midcentury suburban paradise shaded by tall palm trees. All the women here are homemakers, and all the men work at a mysterious facility out in the desert called the Victory Project. What they do there is a closely guarded secret; the project’s leader is a charismatic devil called Frank (Pine), a cultish figure who speaks only in bland, nonspecific aphorisms about their common cause and utopian lifestyle.

Alice glides through this existence in a contented haze, enjoying Jack’s attentions at home, sipping drinks with her sardonic neighbor Bunny (Wilde), and practicing ballet with the other women under the cool gaze of Frank’s wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan). But she can’t help noticing cracks in the facade of this perfect world — a disturbed wife in the house next door, an empty eggshell, a plane falling out of the sky. She’s drawn to these imperfections, but nobody else seems to notice; her own attention slips, and her reality starts to fracture.

There doesn’t seem to be much linking this glamorous, hyper-real, rather sour psychological thriller with Wilde’s previous film, the likable and conscientiously sweet teen comedy Booksmart . But behind both films you can sense a director with strong, propulsive, crowd-pleasing instincts, who likes to go big and doesn’t have much time for shades of gray. That’s no kind of dis — it’s an all-too-rare pleasure to see a female director working in this populist register, with considerable studio resources behind her. ( Gina Prince-Bythewood ’s muscular The Woman King , also in theaters, hopefully makes it a trend.)

But Wilde’s willingness to go for the audience’s jugular served her better with a ribald comedy than it does in a film working in an ambiguous, mystery-box mode. Right from the start, she loads the film with extremely pointed visual metaphors. Some of these are original and striking: Pugh getting pressed back by the plate glass windows of her perfect home, or suffocating herself with plastic wrap. Some are cliched and painfully on the nose: those empty eggs, a repeating Groundhog Day motif of sizzling bacon and coffee being poured, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike cavorting in a giant cocktail glass. None of them are subtle. Wilde starts deconstructing the world of Victory before she’s finished building it, and she does it armed with a Hitchcock box set taped to a sledgehammer.

There’s no room for surprise or nuance as Alice circles closer to the truth of what’s happening to the wives of Victory. Nothing is as it seems, and yet, to an even mildly movie-literate audience, everything is exactly as it appears to be. Even if you don’t guess the exact nature of the Shyamalan-esque turn in the narrative, you’ll know its contours, and sense where it’s headed, long before it arrives.

Maybe there’s a forthright honesty to this — even a justified anger. After all, if you’re asking what keeps women bound to an unfulfilling fantasy of becalmed domesticity, what force constrains their personhood, then it’s really no mystery at all. Perhaps to pretend otherwise for the sake of a satisfying twist would be its own form of gaslighting. But if that’s the case, then a high-concept mystery thriller was surely the wrong medium for the message.

So it proves. The film’s final act dissolves into a mess of illogic, irresolution, and half-formed ideas. The filmmakers pull back the curtain and point the finger, but can’t quite manage — or can’t quite be bothered — to explain themselves and to work out the consequences. (Wilde hired her Booksmart collaborator Katie Silberman to rework an original script by Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke; Don’t Worry Darling has all the hallmarks of being overdeveloped.)

Oddly enough, the actor who’s stranded by the film’s collapse is not Pugh, but Styles. He’s not the disaster some gleefully predicted. He has no edge to speak of, but he looks very dashing, and his boyish artlessness works better with the film’s themes than you might think; in Victory, the women aren’t the only ones being manipulated. But as the plot unspools, he deflates pathetically; under the Harry Styles of it all, there’s nothing left.

It would be impossible to do that to Pugh. Alice may be just as much of a cipher on the page, but on screen, Pugh’s rooted physicality and radiant, mischievous, stubborn sense of life are realer than real. She will not be denied, and she powers Don’t Worry Darling over the finish line through sheer force of will.

Pugh’s performance is enough of a recommendation to see this shiny, smoothly finished movie-that-feels-like-a-movie. The production design, costuming, and cinematography are ravishing, and wielded with precision. Musically, it’s even richer and a little edgier, pitting crooning doo-wop and civilized jazz against John Powell’s unsettling, nervy score. In the space between these luxurious images and discordant sounds, you can feel a door opening to a thornier, more provocative film. But Wilde, anxious to make sure everyone gets the point, has nailed it shut.

Don’t Worry Darling opens in theaters on Sept. 23.

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Don’t Worry Darling

Every lamp and ladylike cocktail dress, every convertible and clink of a martini glass is a perfect reflection of retro chic in Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling.”

Who wouldn’t want to live in the suburban Shangri-la of Victory, with its minimalist, mid-century modern homes and bawdy, booze-soaked dinner parties? Young, attractive families find their every want and need fulfilled under the idyllic shimmer of the Southern California sun.

But something’s not quite right here. That much is clear to us early on, and that nagging suspicion increasingly gnaws at Florence Pugh ’s perky party girl, Alice. Sure, shopping all afternoon with her fellow housewives is fun, as is having her handsome husband, Jack, come home from a long day at work and service her on the dining room table before he’s even taken a bite of the roast and mashed potatoes. (We’ll come back to Harry Styles , and his many talents and challenges, in a bit.)

The revelation of what that something is, though, results in such a shrug of annoyance and disappointment that it very nearly ruins the entire experience in retrospect. I may have groaned audibly, “Ugh, really? That’s it?” at a recent press screening. Discovering what’s actually going on raises more questions than it answers, and it shines a harsh light on the half-baked notions in the script from Katie Silberman . She also wrote Wilde’s directorial debut, the delightfully raunchy comedy “ Booksmart ,” which had a focus and an emotional authenticity that are lacking in this thriller.

“Don’t Worry Darling” aims to explore the tyranny of the patriarchy, disguised as domestic bliss. This is not a new idea, but then again, there aren’t many new ideas here. You can see the various pieces being pulled together from better source material—a bit of “The Stepford Wives,” a whole lot of “Mad Men,” and a bunch of movies that would serve as spoilers to list them. Watching Pugh once again function as the clear-eyed voice of reason—and watching her get gaslit when she tries to warn everyone about the sinister undercurrents within a joyful setting—also brings to mind her visceral work in “ Midsommar ,” one of the key performances that signaled to the world she’s one of the finest young actresses of her generation. When will people finally learn to listen to Florence Pugh???

She is indeed a powerhouse, which makes it that much more glaringly obvious that Styles was not yet ready for this assignment. As an actor, he’s a terrific pop star. Granted, his character is meant to be empty and pretty, and he definitely looks the part with his slim suits and sleek, angular features. The camera loves him. But when it comes time for him to summon the emotional depth he needs for his more intense scenes opposite Pugh, he’s distractingly outmatched. (Interestingly, Shia LaBeouf was first cast in the role, but it’s hard to imagine him here as the earnest, young company man on the rise. His presence is too forceful, too unsettling.)

Styles’ appeal at least fits the premise of “Don’t Worry Darling,” in which a select group of forward-thinking families has moved to a planned Palm Springs community to create their own society in the mid-1950s. “It’s a different way. A better way,” Gemma Chan ’s glamorous Shelley assures her guests at one of the movie’s many soirees. Her husband is the town’s founder, Frank, and he’s played with the devious purr of a self-satisfied cult leader by Chris Pine .

Every day is the same, and that’s meant to be the allure. The men leave for work in the morning, lunchboxes in hand, on the way to top-secret jobs at the Victory Project, which they can’t discuss with their wives. The wives, meanwhile, send them off with a kiss before embarking on a day of vacuuming and bathtub scrubbing, then perhaps a dance class, and definitely some day drinking. Wilde herself plays Alice’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Bunny, with cat-eye makeup and a conspiratorial grin. She brings some enjoyable swagger and humor to this increasingly creepy world.

But little by little, Alice begins to question her reality. Her anxiety evolves from jittery paranoia to legitimate terror the more she discovers about this place, and Pugh makes it all palpable. Images come to her in impressionistic wisps and nightmares that startle her awake in the dark. In time, Wilde relies too heavily on these visuals: black-and-white clips of Busby Berkeley-style dancers, or close-ups of eyeballs. They grow repetitive and wearying rather than disturbing. The heavy-handed score from John Powell becomes more insistent and plodding, telling us how to feel at every turn. Whatever you’re thinking might be at play here, it’s probably more imaginative than what it turns out to be.

Once Alice finds the courage to confront Frank about her suspicions, though, it results in the film’s most powerful scene. Pugh and Pine verbally circle and jab at each other. Their chemistry crackles. Each is the other’s equal in terms of precision and technique. Finally, there’s real tension. More of this, please.

What’s ironic is that Frank and Shelley’s mantra for their worshipful citizens is one of control: the importance of keeping chaos at bay, of maintaining symmetry and unity, of living and working as one. But as “Don’t Worry Darling” reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that’s both dizzying and perplexing.

The craft on display is impeccable, though, from the gleaming cinematography from Matthew Libatique ( Darren Aronofsky ’s usual collaborator) to the flawless production design from Katie Byron to the to-die-for costumes from Arianne Phillips . The excellent work of all those behind-the-scenes folks and others at least makes “Don’t Worry Darling” consistently watchable, all the way up to its non-ending of an ending. Let’s just say you’ll have questions afterward, and those post-movie conversations will probably be more thoughtful and stimulating than the movie itself. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers
• Harry Styles as Jack Chambers
• Chris Pine as Frank
• Olivia Wilde as Bunny
• Gemma Chan as Shelley
• KiKi Layne as Margaret
• Nick Kroll as Dean
• Kate Berlant as Peg
• Douglas Smith as Bill
• Asif Ali as Peter
• Affonso Gonçalves
• Carey Van Dyke
• Katie Silberman
• Shane Van Dyke
• John Powell

Cinematographer

• Matthew Libatique
• Olivia Wilde

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles Sizzle in Olivia Wilde’s Neo-’50s Nightmare Thriller, but the Movie Is More Showy Than Convincing

The film's "Stepford Wives"-meets-"Handmaid's Tale" vision of a sunny, creepy retro cult community is better than its overly telegraphed and top-heavy conspiracy plot.

By Owen Gleiberman

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Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling” is a movie that, in recent weeks, has been besieged and consumed by offscreen dramas, none of which I’ll recount here, except to note that when a film’s lead actress seems actively reluctant to publicize the film in question, that’s a sign of some serious discord. Yet it would be hugely unfair to allow this tempest in a teapot of gossipy turmoil to influence one’s feelings about the movie. If you want to talk about problems related to “Don’t Worry Darling,” you need look no further than at what’s onscreen.

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And the women? They stay home, chatting and backbiting, cleaning house, looking after the kids, hanging out at the pool, preparing tuna salad and deviled eggs, taking ballet classes, and greeting their husbands after work with a drink at the door. You may survey it all and think: What fresh hell is this? But “Don’t Worry Darling” hasn’t even gotten to the sinister part yet. The name of this surreal retro subdivision is Victory, and the main thing everyone talks about is how wonderful it is. How lucky they are to be there, and how happy they are to have escaped the life they had before.

Our entry point into the Victory lifestyle is a childless couple who look singularly sexy, appealing, and in love: Jack, played by Styles with a wholesome cunning that marks him as a natural screen actor, and Alice, played by Florence Pugh, who holds down the center of the movie with a spark of eagerness that melts into a wary detective’s gaze. These two can hardly keep their hands off each other (early on, she clatters her dinner roast onto the floor, so that Harry’s Jack can go down on her — a scene that should sell $5 million worth of opening-weekend tickets right there), and there’s an affection to their interplay. But is it real? Is anything we’re seeing real?        

The prefab community of Victory is run by a man named Frank, who also created it, and as played by Chris Pine he has the personality of a New Age cult leader — not a proto guru from the ’50s but one of those smiling fascists of self-actualization, the kind who can kill you with their sensitive positivity. And, of course, the reason for that is that they’re never sincere. They’re trying to get something out of you. They’re “open” about everything but their own agenda. Pine gives a delectable performance, but as soon as Alice and Jack join the other residents for a party at Frank’s oversize house, it’s clear something deeply troublesome is at play.

The characters in “Don’t Worry Darling” have a cult leader because they are, in essence, a cult: contempo folks who have formed a community in which they pretend to live like middle-class ’50s drones, and agree never to question anything and to do just what they’re told. Asking questions about what’s really going on, the way Alice starts to, is going to get you in trouble. If the film has a resonance, and bits and pieces of it do, it’s that we’re living in a world today that seems increasingly assembled out of cult psychology: the de facto cult leaders (like Trump), the tribal mindsets that dictate a rigid moral absolutism, the retro fetishization of 1950s values as a prime ideal.

Of course, when those other movies came out (even “The Stepford Wives,” which was never more than an amusing piece of claptrap), the world was a little less used to this kind of conspiratorial socio thriller. The early scenes of “Don’t Worry Darling” are the film’s best, but even there it’s hard not to notice the top-heaviness with which the movie telegraphs its own darkness. (It’s not like we watch Chris Pine’s speech and think, “What a good dude!”) To really work, the movie needed to reel us in slowly, to be insidious and creepy and surprising in the way that “Get Out” was. Instead, it’s ominous in an obvious way.

But it does have a big twist, which I will, of course, not reveal. I’ll just say that it’s a blend of “Squid Game” and Shyamalan, that it wants to spin your head but may leave you scratching it, and that it’s hooked to Harry Styles being cast, for one section, as a runty unattractive geek, which (surprise) is not exactly convincing. What is convincing is how easily Styles sheds his pop-star flamboyance, even as he retains his British accent and takes over one party scene by dancing as if he were in a ’40s musical. There’s actually something quite old-fashioned about Styles. With his popping eyes, floppy shock of hair, and saturnine suaveness, he recalls the young Frank Sinatra as an actor. It’s too early to tell where he’s going in movies, but if he wants to he could have a real run in them.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room (Venice Film Festival), Aug. 25, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 123 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema, Vertigo Entertainment production. Producers: Olivia Wilde, Katie Silberman, Miri Yoon, Roy Lee. Executive producers: Richard Brender, Daria Cercek, Catherine Hardwicke, Celia Khong, Alex G. Scott, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke.
• Crew: Director: Olivia Wilde. Screenplay: Katie Silberman. Camera: Matthew Libatique. Editor: Affonso Gonçalves. Music: John Powell.
• With: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll.

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'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles Get Weird

Don't worry about the offscreen drama: Olivia Wilde's glossy flick is a messy but stylish B-movie, streaming now and on Blu-ray and DVD in time for Christmas.

Florence Pugh leaves her worries behind in Don't Worry Darling.

In case you were worried, Don't Worry Darling is a perfectly serviceable slice of big-screen weirdness. The slick psychological drama, now on DVD and Blu-ray and streaming on  HBO Max , is a glossy, stylishly surreal thriller with something to say, featuring Harry Styles, an endless array of gorgeous fashions and Florence Pugh in excellent form. What more do you want?

Having premiered in September amid endless bizarre reports from the set and film festivals, Don't Worry Darling is available to rent and buy online now. It's also out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in time for Christmas gifts for Harry Styles fans. 

Pugh stars as a glamorous 1950s housewife living a picture-perfect suburban life. She even has a trophy husband, played by pop star Styles in a wardrobe of impeccable suits and enviable midcentury shirts. But none of the gossiping wives know where their husbands go each day in their shiny Cadillacs, and Pugh begins to wonder what's really driving the sun-dappled desert town's smoothly sinister leader, played by Chris Pine. No one else seems worried about it, darling, but there's definitely something weird going on in this retro utopia.

Director Olivia Wilde slowly cranks up the unsettling aspects of this odd idyll, tormenting Pugh's increasingly unsettled housewife with teasing visions and mounting paranoia. Wilde also plays one of the other wives, perpetually armed with a cocktail and sharply penciled side-eye. There's a hint of The Stepford Wives about them, and you'll probably also find yourself thinking of any number of midcentury melodramas and domestic chillers that stab at the suburban fantasy, from Rosemary's Baby to Blue Velvet to Get Out.  

So yeah, obviously you know there's a twist coming. I can't get through a short TV episode of Black Mirror or Devs or Tales From the Loop without impatiently wishing someone would just tell me the twist so I can go do something more interesting. It's a real feat to spin a yarn that keeps the viewer engrossed for a whole movie. Don't Worry Darling largely pulls it off: As John Powell's unnerving score meshes with classic 1950s pop cuts soundtracking the deliciously stylish oddness, I found myself half-hoping for no explanation at all. There's only a limited choice of endings for these kind of stories and an over-literal solution rarely lives up to the vibe.

Florence Pugh and Harry Styles in Don't Worry Darling.

As the film premiered at film festivals in recent weeks, the bizarre happenings on screen have been matched by extraordinary events among the film's director and stars. It isn't worth rehashing the drama , but it's grimly ironic that the off-screen drama has boosted a film which could easily have sunk without trace. Don't Worry Darling is a medium-sized movie, and an original story -- the sort of thing you don't see so much in theaters any more. Even with huge stars aboard, Don't Worry Darling could easily have been one of those streaming flicks everyone talks about for two years and gets excited about the trailer and then one day you wonder, hey, whatever happened to that movie, and realize it came out on Netflix Prime Video Hulu Plus three months ago.

But don't relish the messy gossip too much. The frenzied media circus threatens to  overshadow the artistic merit of a film directed by a woman , to an extent that's barely conceivable for male filmmakers. Still, even if you haven't been following the spit and spats, it's simply impossible to go into Don't Worry Darling with no preconceived notions. You're not meant to. Styles is the hottest pop star in the world, Pugh the hottest movie star. The sizzling pairing of personas is the whole point.

At least it should be. Pugh proves her talent with an almost casual effortlessness, embodying a theater-filling anguish while leaving a lingering impression she still has more left in the tank. Pugh delivers a commanding, often mesmeric performance that anchors the film at even its weakest moments.

And Harry Styles is also there.

If we're being charitable, this is one of those blessed occasions when a performer's limitations kinda suit the character. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can't convince anyone he's a human person but is perfect as an inarticulate barbarian or stiffened robot. In Don't Worry Darling, Styles' pomaded husband is a fantasy figure, so it's OK that he struggles to inject any emotion into his lines. He's less a performer and more of a prop -- another piece of the glossy furniture filling the set, like a stylish rug or lamp: beautiful, blank and perpetually fading into the background.

At some point during the film, I thought of Matt Smith's turn in Last Night in Soho . Like Don't Worry Darling, Last Night in Soho is an ambiguously fantastical drama about a woman trapped by in a whirlwind of retro glamor and male violence. Smith played the silver-tongued, precisely tailored seducer, embodying a seething mix of sexuality, freedom, jealousy and menace. Here, Chris Pine supplies all those things, because Style sure doesn't.

Giving Styles the benefit of the doubt, casting such a magnetic onstage performer and gloriously playful wearer of clothes subverts the retro manliness of Pine, of Jon Hamm in Mad Men, of Sean Connery's James Bond (glimpsed on a poster in the film). One scene, which plays to Styles' performative strengths as it puts him squarely in the spotlight, offers a whiff of critique for the way he's made to caper before us. Which is just one of the many ideas sloshing around Don't Worry Darling like ice cubes spilling from a cocktail glass.

These ideas may not be particularly subtle or original, but at least there's something going on beneath the sharkskin suits and pinup dresses. Whether the film makes sense of these themes is another question, but the whole thing turns out to be rooted in seethingly timely anger.

So the music, the clothes and at least one of the stars are worth your time. While it's far from the sum of its parts, Don't Worry Darling is a perfectly entertaining B-movie.

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This review was originally a part of our Venice 2022 coverage .

Let’s pretend you’re not terminally online. Now let’s also add a setting that you only care about “Oscar movies” after the nominations have already been announced and have no preconception of film festival rollouts or campaigning for six months to win a trophy. Okay, now we can proceed with talking accurately (and not hysterically) about Olivia Wilde ’s Don’t Worry Darling , a new thriller starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, and Chris Pine .

Pugh plays Alice, a housewife in an idyllic Palm Springs-looking suburb where everyone drinks all night, and Alice and Jack (Styles) are perpetual honeymooners, always in the throes of passion. The cars and attire are straight from the 1950s and so are the gender roles and etiquette. In this community of 72 residents (and expanding!) the men work top secret jobs in the desert, all driving to work at the same time—straight into the desert on unpaved roads to a landing atop a hill. And if their wife asks what they do, a simple “you wouldn’t understand” or immediate oral sex—after walking in the front door after a hard day of who-knows-what—would suffice as an answer.

Pine is the architect of the community. He also hosts a one-hour radio show that’s broadcast into every home, specifically aimed at the wives who reside in Victory. The women do the housecleaning, cooking, and shop with ease. They simply shout “I’ll take it!” when presented with an object in a showing room, and it gets charged to a company account.

RELATED: Explaining the 'Don't Worry Darling' Drama to Your (Irish) Boomer Parents

Wilde, herself, plays Pugh’s best friend in Victory, whose husband ( Nick Kroll ) just got a promotion that came with a pinky ring blessed by Pine. And Gemma Chan appears as Pine’s supportive wife and dance instructor to the housewives, she teaches them not just to dance but a refrain about staying in line. Of course, nothing is as it seems. Once Alice sees (or maybe hallucinates) a plane crash in the mountains, followed by a suicide atop one of the beautiful homes, she starts to ask questions. And Pine’s personality essentially steps in to say, “debate me.”

Any more info than that will give away too much. Though Don’t Worry Darling isn’t so much a twisty movie as it is a withholding movie. Which is somewhat fair because whatever is happening comes via obvious gaslighting. But it’s also a bit of a cop-out. The third act reveal might have actually better served the movie to come earlier in the second act to explain more of the ins and outs between Alice and Jack. And it would also clear up certain bad faith readings on the film you might find if you Google an explanation.

Pause. Let’s move back to where the audience of this is not terminally online. While most of the interesting discussion of Don’t Worry Darling will concern the reveal of what’s really going on, without spoiling that, let me get to what I think works and doesn’t work. First, none of Darling works at all without such a committed performance from Pugh. She brings it her all like she’s in an old-fashioned Hitchcockian thriller (except with orgasms instead of innuendo!). She’s alluring, panicked, frightened, disillusioned, and yassified. Whether or not you think that the movie works or doesn’t, there’s no world in which this works better without her and any carbon copy movie with another actress probably fares worse. Pine, too, understands the assignment, though he has less to play with. There’s a better version of Darling that includes more backstory for him that really drives home the “Whose time is it? Our time!” refrain he has with Styles. Continuing some wins, the costumes and production design are a mid-century catalog that you’d want to yell “I’d take it!” on cloud credit, too. And Matthew Libatique mixes different types of photography to great effect—from Busby Berkeley legs, to vanity mirrors, to desert-dust kickups.

Simply put, it’s a fun movie to look at and Wilde, Pugh, and Pine are all able to significantly string intrigue. But it is lacking in a complete experience because it holds its cards a little too long, while treading some familiar territory in the lead-up. This is a softer Black Mirror update of The Stepford Wives , but what does make it modern could use a little earlier attention, especially in regards to the men in Victory. For all the press quotes that are out there to help us along, Darling is actually too gun-shy at looking directly at modern toxic masculinity. It’s more comfortable in the 50s mold. Perhaps this is to spare Styles' heartthrob status, but you can tell that Pine would be willing to go anywhere that is required in this world. And it’s too bad he doesn’t get to go deeper. Perhaps this is because the 50s style is so intoxicating, the desire to actually peer into the ugliness was more muted than it should be.

Don’t Worry Darling is best as a surface-level matinée thriller with a few follow-up ahas. But it doesn’t sting like it should in the end. Darling chooses to girlboss when it could’ve sucker punched. But it’s still way more watchable than many terminally online people already believe it to be.

Don't Worry Darling is in theaters now.

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The Glib Dystopianism of “Don’t Worry Darling”

Ahead of its release, Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling” has worked a multitude of observers into an enjoyable lather—not just online but also, more heatedly still, in the flesh. I am thinking of the fans who camped out at the Venice Film Festival before the movie’s red-carpet première, on September 5th. There they crouched beneath umbrellas, shielded against the pitiless noontide glare, for a ghost of a chance of a glimpse of Harry Styles, who acts, in the most elastic sense of that word, in the new film. As for the reputed feud between Wilde and Styles’s co-star, Florence Pugh, it is widely and maturely decreed to be insoluble. Tensions are lower in the Taiwan Strait.

And what of the poor movie, lost in the fury and the froth? Well, it’s a bright and whippy little fable, set largely in a small community of ideal homes. The period seems to be the nineteen-fifties, with dress codes and cocktails to match. The cars, not least an open-top silver Corvette, are a retro dream, and, every morning, they pull out of the driveways in unison and depart in proud procession, as if the street were a catwalk. The general color scheme is closely modelled on the Skittles that you will, I trust, be stuffing into your mouth as you watch the film. As for the weather, the sun shines without fail out of (a) a cloud-resistant sky and (b) the rear ends of the local guys. Or so they—and, all being well, their wives—would like to think.

Yet all is by no means well. Consider the household of Jack Chambers (Styles) and his wife, Alice (Pugh), who is fair of face and tremulous of mind. Jack works, as do his buddies, for something called the Victory Project, which involves “the development of progressive materials,” and which harbors a secret so profound that it took me as long as twenty minutes to guess what it was. After a hard day’s mystery labor, Jack likes to come home and have Victory sex with Alice on the dining-room table, thus dislodging the roast that she has toiled to prepare. Her other chores include scrubbing the bathtub, watching her friend Margaret (KiKi Layne) cut her own throat and fall off a roof, and taking a ballet class with her fellow-spouses, among them Bunny (Wilde), the pregnant Peg (Kate Berlant), and Shelley (Gemma Chan), a stinging queen bee.

King of the bees is Frank (Chris Pine), Shelley’s husband, and the mastermind of the Victory Project. Pine is the best thing in the film, his natural bonhomie nicely oiled and seasoned with creepiness. If only Wilde had placed more trust in his confiding smile; instead, she saddles him with slab after slab of overloaded speech. “We men, we ask a lot,” Frank tells the assembled couples. “We ask for strength, food at home, a house cleaned, and discretion above all else.” In other words, “Don’t Worry Darling” is about the development of regressive materials—about forcing women back into boxy lives and striving to convince them that they like it there. The problem is not that this is a cautionary tale but that the caution comes as no surprise. Again and again, Alice embarks with good grace upon a social event, or a domestic task, only to be smothered by its demands. Hence the plastic wrap that she suddenly winds around her head, or the glass wall that inches toward her and almost squishes her flat. It might as well have a sticker attached to it, saying “Warning: Patriarchal metaphor! Do not smudge!”

Get ready for two big reveals. One arrives in the final stretch of the plot, as Alice’s paranoid suspicions are excitingly confirmed. I would argue, however, that the confirmation has been under way from the start. We’ve all seen “The Truman Show” (1998), and a few of us saw “Serenity,” the funniest non-comedy of 2019, so we know the rule: the prettier the paradise, the more certain it is to be a façade, with cracks that open up on cue. That’s why the dystopian disclosures of Wilde’s film feel so easy , and why I would trade it in a heartbeat for Gary Ross’s “Pleasantville” (1998), the tale of two modern teen-agers whooshed back into a fifties TV show, where the bathrooms contain no toilets; the rapport with a utopian past was handled by Ross with an ambivalence and a delicate wit that are no use to “Don’t Worry Darling.” Oh, and the other reveal? Harry Styles can carry a tune, halfway around the world, but give the bloke a line of dialogue and he’s utterly and helplessly adrift. We love you, Harry!

The new movie from Andrew Dominik, “Blonde,” is full of other people’s films. We get clips—or what appear to be clips—from “All About Eve” (1950), “Niagara” (1953), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), and “Some Like It Hot” (1959). What links them is the presence of Marilyn Monroe , except that what Dominik does, with such fine needlework that you can’t spot the seams, is re-create these particular sequences with Ana de Armas, who plays the adult Monroe in “Blonde.” The breathy gasps, the eyes that widen in pleading or panic, the fleeting frowns of perplexity, the million-watt beam: pretty much everything in de Armas’s performance hits the Marilyn mark. She’s so real it’s unreal.

The film, hewn from Joyce Carol Oates’s log-size bio-novel of the same name, clings only loosely to the chronology of Marilyn’s existence. Thus, we kick off in Los Angeles, in 1933, with a fatherless and frightened little girl, Norma Jeane Baker (Lily Fisher), and her scalding mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who drives her, after dark, toward a wildfire that everyone else is eager to flee. “This is a city of sand and nothing will endure,” Gladys says. (Dominik’s script, as far as I can gauge, was doctored by the prophet Jeremiah.) Later, she tries to drown the child in a hot bath. From here, we leap almost twenty years to Norma Jeane, all grown up, and fast becoming Marilyn. Having read for a role, she sheds unfabricated tears. “I’m not thinking,” she says. “I’m remembering.”

Dominik’s knack for summoning sights of great beauty and variety, as demonstrated in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (2007), is unimpaired. In “Blonde,” he tacks to and fro between monochrome—often echoing famous stills of Marilyn—and glaring pops of color. The frame of the image changes shape. The white-sheeted edge of a bed dissolves into the roar of a waterfall. One scene looks as if it were shot with a night-vision camera; all but naked and ghost-pale, Marilyn stumbles around like a stranded gazelle in a documentary about lions. Weirdest of all is the womb with a view. We peer out from inside her, as a doctor deploys his speculum and prepares to abort her child.

What purpose is served here? Is the fracturing of the story meant to suggest that Marilyn’s existence was all broken up to begin with, or could it be that “Blonde,” below its alluring surface, suffers from a moral monotone that needs disguising, lest our attention droop? The burden of the film is that Marilyn was, from first to last, a victim, inundated with prurience, misogyny, and venom. When Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) asks Marilyn how she got her start, she replies, “I guess I was discovered,” but we know better, or worse; we saw her being raped by a studio boss on the carpet of his office. DiMaggio, in turn, marries her and savagely beats her up. Ghastliest of all is the scene in which, sluggish with booze and pills, she is ferried into the hotel suite of John F. Kennedy. Busy on the phone, the leader of the free world commands that she fellate him while he watches rockets and spaceships on TV. Of course he does.

What spoils the Kennedy interlude is not how graphic but how unsubtle it is, desperate to detail the abuse of power and thrilling to its own scurrility. Power is abuse, according to “Blonde,” and pleasure is never unbesmirched. The closest that Marilyn comes to happiness is a languid threesome with the sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson. (“At least you two have fathers,” she tells them, mournfully.) Drinks on the beach with her third husband, Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), are interrupted by a miscarriage; photographers swarm from nowhere to catch her moment of woe, like the Marilyn zealots who hail her arrival at a première, their maws gaping wide, in slow motion, as if to devour her whole.

Bedazzling, overlong, and unjust, “Blonde” does a grave disservice to the woman whom it purports to honor. Lunging into sympathy for her plights, the movie blinds itself to the resolve with which she surmounted them and, especially, to the courage of her comic splendor. Younger viewers who watch it without having seen any Marilyn movies will have no clue how funny she could be. Indeed, I wonder if Dominik resents the very notion of comedy—the way in which it presumes to pluck happiness out of disorder and despair. That is why he shows Marilyn, on the set of “Some Like It Hot,” pausing to lash out mid-song and storming off, and why, as “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” brings the audience around her to its feet, she whispers to herself, “For this, you killed your baby?” It is as though Dominik, by putting us through the ordeal of his film, wants us to feel guilty for ever having delighted in Marilyn Monroe, and to shame us into forsaking further bliss. We must not like it hot. To which the most polite response is: boo-boo-be-doop. ♦

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Florence pugh and harry styles star in thrilling ‘don’t worry darling’ trailer.

Olivia Wilde's film also stars Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons and KiKi Layne.

By Christy Piña

Christy Piña

Associate Editor

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Florence Pugh asks the important questions in the official trailer for Olivia Wilde ‘s star-studded Don’t Worry Darling.

The nearly three-minute trailer, which premiered at CinemaCon, gives the most thorough look at the psychological thriller so far.

Over shots of Wilde, Pugh, Styles and more of the cast, Chris Pine ‘s character says, “All of you wives, we, men, we ask a lot. We ask for strength, food at home, a house clean — and discretion above all else.”

As the trailer continues, viewers see Pugh’s 1950s housewife and her fellow wives question what their husbands are truly doing in their utopian experimental community and begin to worry that the glamorous company behind it may be hiding disturbing secrets.

Don’t Worry Darling  also stars Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons and KiKi Layne.

Wilde presented the trailer at CinemaCon on April 26, saying, “What would it take for you to give up your life to do what is right? That is the question of Don’t Worry Darling. ” She also described the film as a “love letter” to movies like The Matrix and Inception , said that in Pugh’s performance “you are seeing the birth of a full-fledged movie star” and called Styles “a revelation.” She joked, “I am also in the movie because I was the only one we could afford when we got to that point.”

Katie Silberman wrote the screenplay, based on a story she wrote alongside Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke.

Don’t Worry Darling  hits theaters on Sept. 23.

Watch the trailer below.

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My Policeman review: Is Harry Styles' new movie worth a watch?

It's out now on Prime Video.

My Policeman has, in some circles, been one of the most anticipated films of the year, due in large part to boyband heartthrob-turned-Grammy-winning solo artist Harry Styles serving as its leading man.

Based on Bethan Roberts' 2012 novel of the same name, the period drama takes place in 1950s Brighton and follows a torrid love triangle between closeted policeman Tom Burgess (played by Styles), his wife Marion ( The Crown 's Emma Corrin), and his lover Patrick Hazelwood ( The Last Kingdom 's David Dawson) during a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK.

Four decades later, older Patrick (Rupert Everett) moves into older Marion (Gina McKee) and older Tom's (Linus Roach) Peacehaven home after suffering a stroke, and the film cuts between the two time periods in lengthy flashbacks after Marion discovers Patrick's diaries detailing his love affair with her husband.

Watch My Policeman on Prime Video

While there's no denying the film takes great care in recognising the tragedy of an era that forced gay people into either suppressing their sexuality or face persecution, it's merely surface level.

Tom is the prize both Marion and Patrick desire, which is why at first it seems Styles was perfectly cast, as his charisma and star power make him the believable centre of this love triangle.

Beyond this, however, he falls short of conveying the necessary depth and inner turmoil of a repressed gay man torn between the socially accepted (though platonic) love he has for wife, and the heartbreakingly passionate, forbidden one he has for his lover.

While there are some moments of promise and raw emotion, his delivery often feels unnatural and his lack of experience in comparison to his seasoned co-stars shows.

Related: Harry Styles talks about "tender and loving" gay sex scenes in new movie My Policeman

Corrin puts in a solid performance as Marion, but it's Dawson who's the standout as worldly museum curator Patrick, radiating allure and refinement while permeating the heartache of a closeted life. One particular scene in which Patrick realises it's not his policeman who has showed up to his work will have you reaching for the tissues.

Styles and Dawson do have chemistry, but the script doesn't fully develop any of the characters and fails to convey the depth of Tom and Patrick's emotional connection beyond passionate sex and their attraction to one another. The time-jump also leaves us wondering what's transpired between them all over the past forty years.

Of course, it's hard to feel anything but compassion for these three characters, who have all been robbed of love by intolerance. But overall, it's a flat adaption that sadly had the potential to be much more.

How to watch My Policeman online at home

My Policeman is available to watch right now on Prime Video for all subscribers.

Not a subscriber? It'll cost £8.99 a month , or £95 for a full year , to sign up to Amazon Prime to give you access to all Prime Video has to offer.

In better news, if you've never subscribed to Amazon Prime or haven't signed up in the past 12 months, you can get a 30-day free trial , which will give you all of the benefits of Prime for the whole trial duration, including Prime Video.

If you don't want to sign up to Amazon Prime, My Policeman is still playing in select cinemas, but you won't find it in any of the major UK chains.

My Policeman is available to watch now on Prime Video .

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My Policeman

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Watch My Policeman with a subscription on Prime Video.

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Mildly arresting in its best moments, My Policeman tends toward the tedious despite the respectable efforts of a capable cast.

My Policeman takes its time, but if you give it a chance, this beautiful, well-acted story will break your heart.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Michael Grandage

Harry Styles

Tom Burgess

Rupert Everett

Older Patrick Hazlewood

Linus Roache

Older Tom Burgess

Emma Corrin

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My Policeman

The arrival of Patrick into Marion and Tom's home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previously. The arrival of Patrick into Marion and Tom's home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previously. The arrival of Patrick into Marion and Tom's home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previously.

• Michael Grandage
• Ron Nyswaner
• Bethan Roberts
• Harry Styles
• Emma Corrin
• 198 User reviews
• 93 Critic reviews
• 50 Metascore
• 1 win & 4 nominations

Top cast 40

• Younger Tom

• Younger Marion

• Younger Patrick

• Pianist London Café

• Jackie Stewart

• Pianist Argyle Bar

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia To prepare for his role, Harry Styles memorized the entire script. According to the director, Styles could recite every character's lines in a given scene.
• Goofs Young Patrick's hair recedes much more than "Old" Patrick's.

[after learning of Marion's involvement in Patrick's arrest]

Tom : You destroyed him.

Marion : We destroyed each other.

• Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: This Movie was Shockingly Terrible - Best and Worst of TIFF 2022 (2022)
• Soundtracks Memories Are Made of This Written by Rich Dehr (as Richard Dehr), Terry Gilkyson and Frank Miller Performed by Dean Martin Courtesy of Capitol Records, LLC Under licence from Universal Music Operations Ltd.

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 53 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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The drama surrounding Harry Styles, Florence Pugh and 'Don't Worry Darling,' explained

All the drama surrounding the new psychological thriller "Don't Worry Darling" isn't taking place onscreen. It's happening in real life.

The movie, which stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as a young married couple living in a dreamy 1950s-style suburban community that isn't as ideal as it looks, arrived in theaters Sept. 23. But for months leading up to its release, director Olivia Wilde's  film has been generating buzz – and not in a positive way, unless you're all about Hollywood canoodling, passive-aggressive interviews, celebrity feuds, icy red-carpet appearances and manly loogies.

Not hip to the movie's various scandals and controversies? Don't worry, darlings, we've got you. Here's everything you need to know about the drama, including Wilde's responses to many of them on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" days before the movie's debut:

'Don't Worry Darling' review: At least Florence Pugh sparkles in buzzy but flat retro thriller

R-rated 'Don't Worry Darling' arrived with a truly saucy trailer

The first footage previewed the film's retro setting and also its sensual side, with glimpses of Styles and Pugh's characters getting busy in a bedroom and also an oral sex scene on a dining room table. If Wilde had her way, there would have been more: Wilde acknowledged in a recent interview with The Associated Press that she "had to cut some shots" for the trailer when "the MPAA came down hard on me." 

Pugh, however, didn't love the attention the steamy sequences brought. (She has other complaints, which we'll get to.) “It's not why I’m in this industry,” Pugh said in a Harper's Bazaar cover story.

'Don't Worry Darling': Olivia Wilde says Harry Styles is 'a revelation' in sexy thriller

Jason Sudeikis served Olivia Wilde with custody papers onstage at CinemaCon

The Las Vegas convention for theater owners was ground zero for more hubbub: Midway through her presentation, Wilde was handed a manila envelope labeled "personal and confidential" by someone from the audience. She thought it was at first a script but they turned out to be  papers served by her ex Jason Sudeikis  related to custody of their two children.

Wilde opened up about the incident in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, saying she was "deeply saddened" and "disturbed" by it. 

"So many people were shocked on my behalf," Wilde said. "I wasn't that shocked. Unfortunately, that was consistent with my experience of the relationship."

'Really vicious': Olivia Wilde breaks silence on custody docs from Jason Sudeikis

Harry Styles and his 'Darling' director Olivia Wilde started dating (or so it appears)

Wilde and the former One Direction singer have been photographed kissing and holding hands  throughout the past year, sparking speculation they're a couple. "I’m not going to say anything about it, because I’ve never seen a relationship benefit from being dragged into the public arena," Wilde told Variety. "We both go out of our way to protect our relationship; I think it’s out of experience, but also just out of deep love."

Styles has kept their relationship pretty professional in interviews, telling Howard Stern that being directed by Wilde was " a wonderful experience ."

'Don't Worry Darling': Why is everyone talking about Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles?

Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh may be feuding (or not, depending who you ask)

In July, unnamed sources told  Page Six that Wilde and Styles being "all over each other on set did not go down well" with Pugh, since Wilde was still with Sudeikis during filming. (The couple officially split in November 2020.) Online sleuths took the "feud" and ran with it, pointing out that the day the "Darling" trailer debuted, Pugh shared a post about a different movie she's in , Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." (Pugh did share a "Don't Worry Darling" teaser on Instagram  a month later.) 

The "Darling" director and star kept their distance during the movie's premiere at Venice Film Festival, where Pugh sweetly danced with her grandma on the red carpet. But Wilde, for her part, has called reports of their falling-out "baseless rumors and gossip," and has been effusive in her praise of Pugh, who is currently shooting "Dune: Part 2." 

"Florence is one of the most in-demand actresses in the universe," Wilde told Vanity Fair. "I gather that some people expect for her to be engaging more on social media. I didn’t hire her to post. I hired her to act. She fulfilled every single expectation I had of her. That’s all that matters to me." 

She continued to praise the actress in her Sept. 21 interview with Colbert, denying any beef between the two.

"I have nothing but respect for Florence’s talent," she said, while also commenting that her "male directing colleagues" would not be targets of such questions. "I have nothing against her for any reason."

Wilde also praised Pugh a third time in an Elle interview published Oct. 13 when asked about the difficulty of the promotion around "Don't Worry Darling." She told the magazine for its 2022 Women in Hollywood edition about Pugh's "wise" reaction to the rumored on-set drama. 

"It is shocking to see so many untruths about yourself traded as fact,” Wilde said.  “Florence had a really wise comment that we didn’t sign up for a reality show. And I love that she put it that way."

Wilde said it feels like the public believes "that if you are making something that you’re selling to the public, you somehow have accepted that your life will be torn to shreds by a pack of wolves. No, that’s actually not part of the job description. Never was.”

Florence Pugh: Actress reveals she and Zach Braff quietly broke up 'without the world knowing'

Shia LaBeouf may have been fired from 'Don't Worry Darling' (or not, depending who you ask)

One of the latecomers to the "Don't Worry" scuttlebutt is LaBeouf, who was originally cast opposite Pugh before Styles. When LaBeouf left just before production started in August 2020, Warner Bros. cited a scheduling conflict, but Wilde told Variety that he was fired because of an acting process that "was not conducive to the ethos that I demand in my productions" and required "a combative energy."

LaBeouf fired back, forwarding a series of emails to Variety that he had sent to Wilde: “ You and I both know the reasons for my exit. I quit your film because your actors and I couldn’t find time to rehearse," he wrote. LaBeouf also included a video that Wilde allegedly sent him alluding to tension between the actor and Pugh: "I think this might be a bit of a wake-up call for Miss Flo."

In Wilde's "Late Show" interview, Colbert pressed her on the LaBeouf controversy , which she said was a "question of semantics."

"We had to replace Shia," she said. "He is a fantastic actor, but it wasn’t going to work and when he gave me the ultimatum of him or Florence, I chose Florence."

She added that in the end, everyone "ended up with what they wanted."

"He didn’t want to be a part of the production we were making in the way I like to make productions, and so he moved on. We moved on and replaced him and ended up with a cast that I’m so proud of, with a movie I’m really thrilled about."

The Internet is afire that Harry Styles (maybe) spat on Chris Pine at Venice Film Festival

#HarryStyles appears to spit on Chris Pine i won't sleep until i know the truth pic.twitter.com/wLXjIHTYgU — JZMaclin (@Mac70J) September 6, 2022

The latest "Darling" debacle happened at the Venice premiere, where several audience members captured video of Styles returning to his seat next to Pine and appearing to quickly spit on his co-star's hand. Social media is treating it like the Zapruder film, looking for different angles and everybody offering their own – ahem – spit take.

While Pine seems to stop clapping as it happens and smiles, hinting it might be an inside joke between buds, Pine's representative told People that it was "a ridiculous story" and, at least in this instance, the spit did not hit the fan: "There is nothing but respect between these two men and any suggestion otherwise is a blatant attempt to create drama that simply does not exist."

Styles joked about the brouhaha during his Sept. 7 concert at Madison Square Garden, saying, "It's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to be back in New York. I just popped very quickly to Venice to spit on Chris Pine." 

Wilde addressed Spitgate on "Colbert," calling it a "another one of our weird rumors."

"People will look for drama anywhere they can. Harry did not spit on Chris ," Wilde said, noting that people "see what they want to see" even if video evidence shows otherwise. "He really didn't."

Pine later addressed the allegations in a TikTok video with Esquire released in March 2023.

The video, posted months after the initial rumors circled, is captioned "settling the #spitgate debate once and for all." 

"He didn't spit on me," Pine said in the video. "I think what he says he leaned down and I think he said, 'it's just words, isn't it?' Because we had this little joke — because we're all jet lagged, we're all trying to answer these questions. And sometimes when you're doing these press things, your brain goes up befuddled and started speaking gibberish and we had a joke."

'Don't Worry Darling' producer, crew deny workplace misconduct allegations 

In a statement provided to USA TODAY on Sept. 24, Miri Yoon, a producer on the film, denounced "allegations about unprofessional behavior" on set as "completely false," including the allegation that there was a  verbal altercation between Wilde and Pugh during filming in January 2021.

"Olivia is an incredible leader and director who was present with and involved in every aspect of production," read the statement, which was also signed by 40 crew members. "She ran this set with class and respect for everyone involved. There was never a screaming match between our director and anyone, let alone a member of our cast."

After all that, 'Don't Worry Darling' turns out to be a dud — sort of

All this ado ahead of the movie's release had to amount to something, right? The movie had to be awesome enough to be worth all this time spent talking about it, correct?

Well, yes and no. 

Ahead of the release, "Darling" garnered a thumbs down from critics, only mustering a measly 38% positive rating  on RottenTomatoes.com – a far cry from the 96% mark Wilde scored for her excellent debut feature, "Booksmart."

But during its opening weekend, the film opened No. 1 at the box office, debuting with $19.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sept. 25. For an original film that cost $35 million to make, a $19.2 million launch was solid – and slightly more than the studio had forecast.

A large number of moviegoers, including plenty of Styles fans, turned up to see what all the fuss was about.

'Don't Worry Darling' survives drama, harsh reviews, tops box office with $19.2M

Contributing: Bryan Alexander, Patrick Ryan, Morgan Hines, Charles Trepany, Amy Haneline, Hannah Yasharoff and Edward Segarra, USA TODAY

Review: ‘My Policeman’ unspools longing and regret of a Harry Styles-centered sexual triangle

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“My Policeman” is an absorbing, resonant, deeply wistful adaptation of the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts that will probably be best appreciated — stylistically, thematically, romantically — if judged more within the context of its mainly mid-20th century setting than by contemporary expectations.

If anything, the film’s vivid re-creation of a more repressive era, in this case in England, where homosexual activity between men was long illegal (it was first conditionally decriminalized in 1967), proves a stark and crucial reminder of how far LBGTQ+ rights and acceptance have come in much of the world — and perhaps how fragile such equality continues to be.

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In 1957 Brighton, a young policeman named Tom ( Harry Styles ) has a chance encounter with local museum curator Patrick (David Dawson) that turns into something much more than a friendship. Meanwhile, Tom, his unsuspecting girlfriend, Marion ( Emma Corrin ), and the worldly Patrick form a kind of troika and share an ebullient series of summertime adventures. But when Tom and Marion marry, said trio turns into a pair of duos — and dueling ones at that — and the inevitable emotional, social and sexual complications ensue, including one extraordinarily grave betrayal.

It’s all quite sensitively and credibly handled by the deft cast, director (and acclaimed stage veteran) Michael Grandage and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia,” “The Painted Veil”). Particularly effective are the ways in which certain moments are informatively, revealingly replayed once we’re let in on the extent of Tom and Patrick’s clandestine romance. The intoxicating love “that dare not speak its name” between the two men is almost tangibly compelling.

The overall story, though, is told in flashback from the 1990s, when we find the older Tom (Linus Roache), Marion (Gina McKee) and Patrick (Rupert Everett) reunited under, to say the least, difficult circumstances: Marion has arranged for Patrick, who has suffered a life-altering stroke, to recuperate with her and Tom (they’re still married but unhappily) in their seaside cottage, against Tom’s wishes.

How the Emma Corrin, Harry Styles drama ‘My Policeman’ tells a timely story of queer love

Directed by Michael Grandage and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, ‘My Policeman’ is a reminder of the dangers of the recent past.

Sept. 11, 2022

For the onetime bobby, who’s pretty much shut away the “Patrick” chapter of his earlier life, the mere presence of his ex-lover — profoundly debilitated though he may be — is clearly too much for Tom to bear and he refuses to see him (not easy in such a small house). But, maybe inspired by reading some of Patrick’s old journals or just finally coming to terms with the life she’s settled for all these years, Marion puts her own personal plan into motion. It may not make for a hugely surprising turn but still one that’s beautifully understated and satisfying.

Stirringly shot by Ben Davis (that hallway image of the older Marion secretly watching Tom watching Patrick is a knockout), evocatively scored by Steven Price and peppered with several familiar, well-used standards, the movie could have withstood a bit more behavioral dissection of each of the main characters as well as a stronger recap of their lives between the tale’s two time periods.

In addition, there’s something of a disconnect between the younger and older Tom’s personalities; their essences don’t fully align. There’s a gentle guilelessness and quiet charm to Tom’s 1950s self that seems to have vanished from the surlier, more remote 1990s version (no fault of the capable Roache), the enduring and complex fallout of his affair with Patrick notwithstanding.

Fortunately, young Tom, engagingly played with a kind of accessibly dreamy, everyman charisma by actor-pop star-“it boy” Styles, is largely such an appealing and affecting character that he carries the day here.

Dawson also cuts a provocative, empathetic figure. Corrin and McKee prove well-matched halves of the vulnerable, long-suffering Marion, while Everett makes the most of a small, but intense and arduous role.

'My Policeman'

Rated: R, for sexual content Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes Playing: In limited release; available Nov. 4 on Prime Video

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‘My Policeman’ Review: Harry Styles Represses Himself

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Amazon Studios releases the film in select theaters on Friday, October 21 and streaming on Prime Video on Friday, November 4.

Like it or not, fall 2022 appears to be the season of Harry Styles . He’s been discussed ad infinitum in the most overexposed film in memory and also this one, “ My Policeman ,” helmed by English theater director Michael Grandage. On the press trail, Styles informed us that this film about the decades-spanning relationship between Tom, a closeted cop (Styles); art curator Patrick (David Dawson, a revelation, but more on that later); and Emma Corrin as Tom’s long-suffering wife Marion, is not “a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me.”

If you say so, but the way he seems to read his own movie suggests he didn’t understand the assignment. That’s reflected in a performance that registers as a blank beyond inscrutable gazes and sappy breakdowns. To play a repressed gay man involved in a steamy, behind-closed-doors affair requires levels of complexity and conveying inner turmoil that Styles can’t provide. There’s at least one good explanation for that, and all those who accuse the Brit pop star of queer-baiting know exactly what that is.

“My Policeman” is often very good, but the best scenes involve Dawson’s rapier-witted and dandyish Patrick or Corrin’s Marion, whom the actress makes more than a beard. She deeply loves Tom, and in his own way, she is loved by him in return. Together, they make up three points of a wobbly love triangle in which two of the actors run circles around the other.

In 1950s Brighton, England, Tom is a working-class police officer driven by conformity, doing everything that’s required of him by a traditional (read: hetero) world, and so when he meets sincere schoolteacher Marion on a glistening summer beach, he sees a chance to even further disappear into himself. The two share a genuine spark — one that never converts to heat. Frustrated over Tom’s seeming inability to consummate their affair, she asks, “Why can’t we be like a real couple?” (i.e., “Why can’t we fuck ?”) That frustration eventually gives way to some tepid thrusting (“I’ll be better next time,” he says). Marion keeps her clothes on, and Tom’s mind is… elsewhere.

As we learn, he’s got Patrick on the brain. Patrick is an urbane sophisticate bursting with intellectual life, rather the opposite of Tom’s dolt (who admittedly isn’t much of a reader). He heads up the western classics department at the Brighton Art Gallery when not globetrotting, increasing his rare art collection, and indulging in life’s sensuous pleasures — up to and including more explicitly sensual ones at local gay speakeasy The Argyle, where he’s been known to pick up men but also where police are arresting and beating them because homosexuality was then illegal.

Tom introduces Patrick to Marion as his “friend,” hoping they can share their love of great art (especially J.M.W. Turner, clearly an inspiration for cinematographer Ben Davis; the film is obsessed with cuts to waves breaking against rocks). This cements the three’s-company dynamic that dominates the story. The trio chows down on culture, from debates over “Anna Karenina” to violin recitals, with Tom staring on blankly.

Behind the scenes, passions are brewing. The movie steps back in time to show really just how Tom came to know Patrick: It’s because they’ve been having some pretty hot sex this whole time back at Patrick’s place, an emerald green-gilded pad lined with wall-to-wall art and rounded mirrors.

Styles recently said that the sex in “My Policeman” would show a more “tender” side to gay lovemaking because “so much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it.” I am here to tell you that the sex in “My Policeman” is rawer than Styles seems to think, from a close-up on Styles’ face, awash in ecstasy, while Patrick goes down on him for the first time, to an overhead shot of Patrick appearing to be topped by Tom, digging his hands into Patrick’s back. This is no Guadagnino-esque panning to a tree.

Later, Tom coughs up to Patrick that he’s planning to marry Marion because he wants kids. “You can afford to break the rules,” Tom says. “I can’t.” Patrick responds by pushing Tom against an embankment and jerking him off. “Can you share me?” Patrick asks, as if to say, “Can Marion do this ?”

In flash-forwards to the 1990s spliced throughout the movie, we see Tom (Linus Roache) now in old age and still married to Marion (an excellent Gina McKee). They have taken in a very sick Patrick (Rupert Everett), who’s recently suffered a stroke and lost his ability to communicate. There’s a funereal “45 Years” vibe to these scenes, and you can almost smell the must of regret and chill in the air. This timeline further introduces an epistolary structure, unfolding via entries from Patrick’s diary that the elder Marion cracks open and reads into the night.

The diary’s lurid details include a sexy jaunt to Venice in the ’50s, where Patrick had serious art business but brought Tom along under the guise of his assistant. This sumptuous montage looks like a postcard, for all the better and the worse of what that entails. Later, an actual postcard serves to undo Tom and Patrick’s affair. How exactly it reaches that point is clunky and cliched, with a third-act “twist” that’s more of a foregone conclusion. (Ron Nyswaner’s script, working from the novel by Bethan Roberts, often caves to the demands of melodrama over character.)

The alternating double-timeline structure threatens to dilute the potency of those past-tense scenes. Grandage tends to shoot his movie like a play, unfolding the story via shot-reverse shot setups of people talking to each other, with little cinematic interest in the objects and minutiae that govern desire.

Styles’ interpretation of the material as a “universal” story that’s not just about “these guys being gay” aside, this is a very specifically gay story about very real gay pain. That also means, yes, “My Policeman” is another movie about gay suffering that features beatings, homophobia, repression, and brooding in the shadows. Perhaps it’s Styles’ lack of personal relationship to the material (Dawson is gay, and Corrin identifies as queer), but his performance feels only like half of one. Anyone can show twisting consternation or a pensive mood, but it’s another thing entirely to communicate the telepathy that hums between queer people (especially secret ones) and the inner whirling rage of desire left unrealized.

However . The movie is anchored, elevated, and very often knocked completely out of the park by Dawson, who is at turns sexy, mysterious, wise, naive, overflowingly open, vulnerable, and strong. It’s one of the best performances of the year, and one that deserves all exaltations in a movie that often lacks them. A late-breaking moment when Patrick’s museum colleague tells him, “There’s a policeman here to see you,” and Patrick lights up, only to realize that it isn’t  that policeman here to see him, will break you.

Overall, “My Policeman” feels a little out of step with the times, with even a moment that feels like a literal callback to “Brokeback Mountain” — a glowering Marion accidentally catching Tom and Patrick in a moment of tenderness and then rushing back to the kitchen to collect herself. Do we really need another reminder that times were bad (and still are) for gay people, which of course means that love must suffer because of it? Still, “My Policeman” isn’t not arresting, and that’s thanks to the work of David Dawson and Emma Corrin, and not the film’s top biller, who was never the lead at all.

“My Policeman” premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Amazon Studios releases the film in select theaters on Friday, October 21 and streaming on Prime Video on Friday, November 4.

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Harry Styles' sister Gemma reveals struggle with suicidal thoughts amid depression battle

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Gemma Styles has opened up about her battle with depression and how she once struggled with suicidal thoughts.

In her new book, Why Am I Like This?, the 33-year-old sister of pop star Harry Styles shares her deeply personal journey in hopes of helping others facing similar struggles.

Despite being "fiercely private," the writer told The Mirror that she wanted to break the silence surrounding mental health.

“One of the things shown to have the most positive impact on people having suicidal thoughts or in the depths of depression is to share stories when you go 'that happened to me. I felt like that, and I feel better now',” she explained.

Styles admitted that while she didn’t “actively want to die”, she “so badly wanted to opt out of what my life had become, it boiled down to the same longing.”

The podcaster, who welcomed her first child with partner Michal Miynowski earlier this year, said that while she currently feels good, she fears depression could return one day.

She continued: “In the back of my mind, sometimes I think that could happen to me again but I try not to dwell on it. I have come though it before and I could do it again.”

In February, the author announced that she had given birth to her first child following a secret pregnancy.

At the time, she took to Instagram to share the happy news along with pictures of her and partner with their newborn daughter.

She captioned her post: “Hello from  maternity leave ! Took some time off to ensure the safe arrival of our baby girl, who is adored by her whole family.

“I know that this news can be difficult for many people and I'm sending you lots of love.”

The pair have been together since 2015. One of their earliest dates was watching her younger brother Harry, 31, perform with his former boyband One Direction.

During the gig at the Apple Music Festival, Harry told the crowd: “I'm sorry if I seem distracted. My sister's here on a date, and I'm trying to keep an eye on it.”

If you've been affected by the topics in this article and need to talk, the Samaritans operate a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or visit their site to find your local branch

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‘My Policeman’ Charts Harry Styles’ Love Triangle. No, Not That One

By Katie Rife

What is it about the English seaside and suppressed yearning? Is it the bracing winds? The overcast skies? The white cliffs and rocky beaches, as bloodless as the emotional lives of characters who are terrified of their heart’s true desires? The beaches of Brighton in My Policeman are slightly sunnier than those of, say, Dorset in 2020’s Ammonite , but the chilling effect is the same. 

There are a few points of novelty livening up My Policeman, namely the casting of mega-pop star/fledgling movie star Harry Styles as the title character. He has an endearingly crooked smile, and a face that’s been proven to set hearts aflame. (Just witness the tabloid drama currently surrounding Styles and Olivia Wilde, director of his other big movie role of 2022 .) So he does make a believable apex for the love triangle that drives the story. Beyond embodying a plausible motivation for two people to waste their lives in pursuit of a man they can never really have, however, the “Watermelon Sugar” singer adds little to the dramatic proceedings. 

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My Policeman uses a handful of narrative contrivances to draw out the tragic backstory behind this gloomy trio’s fraught dynamic. Chief among these is a diary from 40 years ago, which Marion conveniently finds in the box of effects her old friend brought along with him from the hospital. The book details the chance meeting and subsequent romance between a much younger Tom (Harry Styles) and Patrick (David Dawson), which began before Tom started courting Marion ( The Crown ‘s Emma Corrin) and continued after Tom and Marion were married. 

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The word “ordinary” carries a lot of weight here. So does the word “policeman,” which is uttered with hard consonants and, often, a hint of a threat. Director Michael Grandage inserts visual and verbal clues about the class differences — and, therefore, power imbalance — between the two men. Working class Tom drinks beer and falls asleep at classical recitals, while posh Patrick is a scotch-and-opera aesthete. But Tom does have one advantage over Patrick, and that’s the protection afforded him by his uniform and marital status. Tom doesn’t visit underground gay bars, like Patrick does. And if he were to be swept up in a raid at one of these clandestine watering holes, his colleagues could lose the paperwork before his case went to trial. 

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My Policeman review: Harry Styles is a man of two minds in a lush but limited romantic drama

Styles is the object of everyone's affection in director Michael Grandage's sensuous adaptation of a 1950s love triangle.

My Policeman is a movie set in both 1957 and the late 1990s, based on a novel first published ten years ago. But when one of your featured actors is the biggest pop star in the world in 2022, strange things happen to the reality-distortion field around a film. Policeman , which had its North American premiere last night in Toronto , is in almost every way the most classic kind of high-toned British period piece: a tea-kettle swoon steeped in stolen gazes, flocked wallpaper, and long meaningful walks along windswept coastlines. But it is also the story of a love that, back then at least, dared not speak its name between a closeted young officer ( Harry Styles ), his naive bride-to-be ( The Crown 's Emma Corrin ), and the man he actually has endless, gymnastic sex with (David Dawson).

The result, adapted by lauded London theater director Michael Grandage, is fevered, lovely to look at, and at times deeply silly; a plush romantic drama that somehow manages to be both explicit and decorous, like horny Merchant Ivory. Its title also could have been Everybody Loves Harry : He's the film's ever-elusive object of desire, a dimpled dreamboat named Tom who first comes to Corrin's Marion, a schoolteacher-in-training, on a Brighton beach, the elder brother of her childhood friend and a long-simmering crush who finally deigns to turn his attention her way. Within weeks they're seeing each other regularly, though it rarely turns physical outside a few polite grazes in the swimming pool ("He's a gentleman," she insists pluckily to a coworker). He's also eager to improve himself with art and literature, and she's glad enough to show him what she knows, even if they never seem to have much to talk about outside the water.

One of those cultural expeditions leads to the local museum, where a dashing, courtly curator named Patrick (Dawson), whom Tom once met in a traffic accident on the job, is eager to expand their world with lectures and recitals. Patrick also naturally seems to ease the unspoken awkwardness between them, and soon the three of them have become a happy platonic throuple, having the kind of young-people fun that movie montages are made of. Or at least Marion believes it's all platonic; we know nearly from the beginning that it's not because of the film's framing device, in which a 40-years-older Marion (Gina McKee) has taken in Patrick ( Rupert Everett ), now an invalid badly impaired by a stroke, much to the chagrin if not outright fury of Tom (Linus Roache).

Patrick can hardly speak anymore, but a caregiver has also brought along a box of old things, including his diaries from those long-ago days. And as the flashbacks unfold, it's clear there was never much of a triangle at all: Tom and Patrick were crazy about each other. What the characters will do with this very British cycle of repression, release, and heroic self-denial is rendered in the script, by Ron Nyswaner ( Philadelphia , The Painted Veil ), in sometimes delicate but more often jarringly unsubtle ways. That's a hazard, maybe, of trying to adapt the internalized world of a novel for the screen: Subtext becomes bolded and underlined as characters rush to spell out their intentions or long-held secrets in ways that may serve the plot — or at least make for gorgeous, tragic metaphors — but rarely resemble real life.

While the casting of Everett and Roache seems as if it should have been swapped to more physically resemble their younger counterparts and Corrin feels sidelined as a character by design, the actors still do a lot to bring nuance where it doesn't always exist. Dawson ( All the Old Knives ) is quietly affecting as a man so used to subterfuge and fear that he's become defiant in the face of it; he knows the rules of survival as a gay man in a midcentury England where his "lifestyle" is still a felony crime, and how to somehow find pleasure in the cracks in between.

Styles' style is more remote: His Tom often feels like a cipher, thoughtful and charming one moment and heedlessly cruel and manipulative the next. That also makes sense in a way; Tom is, after all, a stranger to himself. And Styles doesn't hold back in the sex scenes, which seem destined to live a long life outside the film online and amongst his considerable fanbase. Otherwise Policeman , as emotionally earnest and elegantly made as it is, mostly feels like a movie we've seen many times before: a pleasantly escapist two hours with pretty people in pretty clothes, madly sublimating their feelings until the final, luminous frame. Grade: B–

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‘don’t worry darling’ review: harry styles and florence pugh’s meh sci-fi film is too obvious.

So much behind-the-scenes drama, so little on-screen satisfaction.

DON'T WORRY DARLING

Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (sexuality, violent content and language). In theaters Sept. 23.

Director Olivia Wilde’s so-so suspense film “Don’t Worry Darling” has been beset by nasty rumors since it premiered in Venice earlier this month. 

Readers devoured news that its terrific star Florence Pugh really hates Wilde and co-star Harry Styles , who are a couple; that Wilde misled the public as to why scandalous actor Shia LaBeouf departed the project; and that Styles maybe hocked a loogie on co-star Chris Pine.

What fun! Shame all of that chaos was way more entertaining than the film that caused it. 

“Darling” is a garbage pizza of other better movies and TV shows: “The Stepford Wives,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Get Out,” “Black Mirror,” “Pleasantville,” “The Truman Show,” “The Village” and on and on. A full-blown sci-fire sale.

What it lacks — and that all of those memorable works have — is a mind-blowing shake-up that puts everything we thought we knew into question. An M. Night Shyamalan twist, if you will. With Wilde’s movie, we’re a mile ahead of the plot by minute one, with 121 still to go.

“Darling” is set in a peaceful desert enclave that looks like Palm Springs (because it was filmed there). There are beautiful mid-century modern homes and swimming pools. All the cars, clothes and record players look straight out of the 1950s. However — and this is problem No. 1 — we can tell straightaway that we are not in the ’50s.

Alice (Pugh) is a doting housewife who lives with husband Jack (Styles). Every morning she looks immaculate as she makes him bacon and eggs and waves goodbye as he drives to his job at the mysterious Victory Project where he and the town’s men make “progressive materials.” No one knows what that really means. They could be manufacturing nukes, paper straws or AOC pamphlets.

Home alone, Alice lives a life of free-flowing cocktails with no hangovers, constant sex, rib-eye steak for lunch, dance class, nightly parties and zero humidity. Please sign me up for this dystopian nightmare.

One fateful day, after venturing beyond where the strict town rules allow, Alice witnesses something at Victory Project’s mountain HQ that we viewers are not privy to, wakes up back home and becomes newly paranoid about her creepy community led by an all-powerful leader named Frank (Pine, fine).

What Wilde and writers Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke do — not unwisely — is bring modern social movements into the old formula. That’s great. But there’s not much more to it than men are bad. 

Pugh, a sensational actress, keeps our interest as she grows increasingly suspicious and sees disturbing visions in mirrors and on windows. She brings class and gravitas to a movie that would otherwise be kinda trashy. 

As her seemingly nice husband, Styles is decent. For now, the pop star is better at being a charming romantic lead than broken, erratic and angry. Regardless, he fits in snugly in this idealized world. Surely many people’s dream lives would involve being married to Harry Styles.

And Wilde, who first burst into the director’s chair with “Booksmart,” gives “Darling” appealing visuals and the story is nicely paced — even if we crave more style, camp and extremes to immerse us in this oddball place.

The director also acts very well in the supporting role of Bunny, a fun-loving neighbor with a secret.

The aim stated the start of every episode of “The Twilight Zone” was to take viewers on a “journey into a wondrous land of imagination.” Not quite up to the task, “Don’t Worry Darling” brings us to a Palm Springs Airbnb with the singer of “Watermelon Sugar.”

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