Darling

I just saw this and liked it very much. The film starts slowly by design, and misdirects you into thinking this will be innocent young girl vs. ghost of devil worshipping former owner, but takes an unexpected turn i doubt anyone will see coming.

The camera is always on the lead actress, often in serious closeup, which must have been a challenge for her but she eats up the camera. Lovely black and white photography, sharp direction, great creepy old mansion location.

Like the best low or micro budget films puts bloated un-scary Hollywood products to shame. Two severed thumbs up!

Shot in black n white, arranged in non-chronological order, and evidently influenced by Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy (especially Repulsion), there is no denying that Darling is a stylishly directed feature but in its overambitious attempt to homage the notable horror classic, it ends up becoming an overbearing & convoluted mess.

Set in New York, the story of Darling follows an unnamed young woman who agrees to house sit at a large mansion that appears to have a notorious past. With nothing to do & unable to kill time, she begins to lose her grasp on reality as the extended exposure to the isolation that abounds the empty mansion triggers her descent into madness.

Written & directed by Mickey Keating, Darling is his tribute to the atmospheric chillers of the 1960s but the film lacks an identity of its own. Throughout its 78 minutes runtime, it applies tricks such as sporadically cutting to maniacal frames, screeching noises for its score & mindless meandering but all its intricacy lies only on the surface, for it is hollow from the inside.

The monochrome filters, confined setting & clever use of camera do manage to bring an unsettling element into the picture but the narrative is simply out of focus and fails to capitalise on that. The only one who is actually able to redeem something out of this whole clutter is Lauren Ashley Carter who tries her best to make her character work and chips in with a violent performance.

On an overall scale, Darling finds its filmmaker succeeding at replicating the look of Repulsion but he is unable to add the same level of thematic depth which turned that psychological horror into a genre classic. Deficient in numerous storytelling aspects & pretending to be something it isn't, this artistic endeavour bounces all over the place yet in the end, finds itself not far from where it started. Skip it.

Be careful reading the reviews on this one, I watched this with the advantage of having never seen 'repulsion' and it must be said I seldom if ever watch a movie in black and white especially if modern.

Having said that I'm an avid Horror fan and taken at face value the movie delivers quite well. It is slow, (ie: at times bludgeoningly so) but is very atmospheric. The wife and I both watched it all the way thru which says much as we often will gong movies before the halfway point (mutually.

Desperately striving to match movies of a bygone era it does not always fall short, a good watch, probably more-so alone at night and during a distant storm...

There is an additional scene midway thru end credits don't forget to stay that long if you make it to the end.

I did enjoy this movie but after watching and remembering the original that i truly loved ,i was looking in the credits but i could not find a mention of Roman Polansky's 1965 movie ''Repulsion'' with Catherine Deneuve of which this is obviously a remake, there are even a few french songs (one with Edith Piaf) in the sound track not to mention that is was shot in black and white (as was the original). I enjoy a revisit of great movies, it sometimes give a new twist to a good plot or treatment but do not pretend that this work is original! Intellectual integrity where are you?

Just my 2 grains of salt

Um, well I guess as a sufficiently elegant,black and white two hander it was effective.Like a studied, gothic chamber piece with frenzied horror type cross-cutting, yes, it borrowed from perhaps at least 10 other properties you could think of but if you can ignore that and just immerse yourself in its mere running time of 78 minutes, it does comes across as fairly assured and comfortable in its own skin.Short on sense, long on style - this is one of those films where the plot mechanics are just thrown in as a secondary device....simply, she's losing her mind. Crackers. Mad as a snake. Hell, let's all just go along with her for the ride, it's not all that far from being an E Ticket....