"Strange Darling" is the Best Romance of the Year

Recently, one of my least favorite questions to be asked is what my favorite movie is. The answer can change by the day or the hour, depending on who I’m talking to or what I’ve recently rewatched. It’s an impossible question. Even more so than that, however, I hate being asked my favorite genre. Typically, I respond to this vague question with similarly vague answers. “I’ll watch anything, but I tend to watch dramas or coming-of-age.” If I went through my movie logs, I’m not sure this would actually be the case, but that answer has become my go-to. As I think about the question more seriously, however, I’ve come to realize how much I appreciate the horror genre. Some of the best releases of these past few years have been horror movies—Nope, Barbarian, and Talk to Me all blew me away. But this year has been especially interesting. My favorite movie of the year so far is The Substance, a wacked-out body-horror film that came out in September, but we’ve also gotten movies like Longlegs, The First Omen, Late Night With the Devil, Longlegs, Blink Twice, Smile 2 and so much more. While every genre has its respective subgenres, I believe horror is unique in how much content it spans. An effective horror movie can make you scared of anything, from being possessed by the devil to the societal expectations placed upon an aging woman. However, one subgenre I rarely get to see in horror is romance, which is what makes J.T. Mollner’s Strange Darling all the more intriguing.

Strange Darling is a film I heard recommended by plenty of other cinephiles and film critics but it never seemed to make it outside of that niche community. I remember it having few showtimes at my local theater before it was promptly pulled out to make room for larger, more well-known properties. It wasn’t until recently that I finally got around to watching it, and unsurprisingly I had a really great time with this one. More than any other movie I’ve written about, I believe this one is imperative to go into blind, which is easy enough considering its level of popularity (or lack thereof). When you google the movie, the synopsis is quite simple: “Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.” Part of what makes this movie so special is how contained it feels. While there is a substantial cast of about ten characters, the story mainly follows just two. We have “the Lady” played by Willa Fitzgerald, and “the Demon” played by Kyle Gallner, who you may recognize from the Smile franchise. Split into six non-sequential parts, we watch the two’s relationship bloom and disintegrate as they play a cat-and-mouse game that can only end when one of them kills the other. There is so much to enjoy about this film. It's crazy and thrilling, aspects that are only emphasized by great writing, directing, and acting. Shot on 35 mm, Strange Darling will undoubtedly be one of the most beautiful movies you watch this year. The most gripping part, however, was undeniably the relationship between the Lady and the Demon.

As mentioned in the synopsis, this movie starts with two people planning to have a one-night stand. The Lady is a devoted sadomasochist while the Demon is new to the practice. During the portions of the film dedicated to the hotel room where their one-night stand occurs, we watch them engage in a fruitless power struggle until the Lady drugs the Demon and stabs him in the chest. Yes, while the film up to this point has led us to believe that the Lady was an innocent woman attempting to escape the wrath of the Demon, it’s then revealed that the Lady is the notorious serial killer known as the “Electric Lady” and the Demon is a cop who wants to bring her down. Right before the Lady can complete the job, the Demon shoots off her ear, and the two begin a cat-and-mouse game that covers the remaining screen time. While I was watching the film, and now, days later, the biggest question I had was, “Why did both of them wait so long to try to kill each other?” The two spend hours in their hotel room talking—about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and when they’re going to have sex—and yet, they never do. Knowing that the Lady is a serial killer, it’s impossible to believe that she hadn’t planned on killing the Demon before they arrived. In a similar vein, seeing that the Demon armed his car and his person with weapons before going to the hotel implies that he knew that the Lady was the Electric Lady before he agreed to the one-night stand. Both these people have motivations to kill the other and end the night as soon as possible, and yet, neither of them does. Instead, they talk and they lie together for hours. Why? Well, because they’re in love.

While I was watching this film, I was immediately reminded of one of my favorite movies, Sanctuary. Recognizing the similarities between the characters in these two movies and the relationships they depict truly helped me to understand what exactly Mollner is doing with this story. Like Strange Darling, Sanctuary is a thriller that follows the power struggle between two people whose extreme situation is only heightened by the emotional stakes that they have in each other—by the love they have for one another. During the final confrontation between the Lady and the Demon, the Demon finally has the Lady cornered, he has his gun pointed in her face, and yet he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. The Lady says, “Love doesn’t have to be something that develops. The purist, most primal kind can hit you like a wave—in a moment, or over the course of one night. I felt that for you…did you feel it for me?” The Demon doesn’t answer. I understand that most viewers won’t view this as a romantic movie, but the beautiful thing about cinema is that it’s able to take these dramatic, fascinating situations to explore the simple, real-life dynamics we observe or even participate in in our own lives. While you may not have gone on a coke-induced murder spree because your partner shot you in the chest, it’s likely that you’ve felt uncomfortable at the thought of being vulnerable with a person because you’re not sure how they’ll react. It’s likely that you’ve tried to maintain your “power” within a relationship so as to not appear weak. It’s likely that the idea of not having complete control of your happiness scares you. Love is not always something that you choose to do. Sometimes, it just hits you—“in a moment, or over the course of one night.” Strange Darling is a movie about two people who have to reconcile with the fact that they have a deep connection to each other that should not be consoled or alleviated, but fortified. And isn’t that just what love is?