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!

A young woman (Lauren Ashley Carter) takes the job of nanny in an old townhouse, rumoured to be haunted.

The film has garnered a lot of praise for its visuals and it's justified. It is a striking looking film with high contrast black and white photography. The plot is minimalist with minimal dialogue and relies more on atmosphere. The film draws comparisons to early Polanski, particularly Repulsion, but it's nowhere near in the same league. There's been a slew of indie demonic possession films like The Devil's Candy and A Dark Song and I honestly preferred those. For me beyond the art and sound design it's just a bit mediocre. It's not as complex or as intriguing as Repulsion, not as chilling as Takashi Miike's domestic horror, Audition. It also suffers from bad tropes of the time popularised by films like Paranormal Activity, which is an over reliance on jumpcuts and milisecond cutaways to messed up scenes.

I wanted to like this film more. In my opinion it has been overrated by horror fansites like Bloody Disgusting. The film is interesting. There has been a considerable amount of work and talent gone into it, but it just left me cold.

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.

And good thing I did so, because she only appeared for a few minutes!! For me this movie did not work, had very little to offer and if you're into such productions just watch Repulsion from 65 and have some time well spent.

Some of the scenes seemed random, maybe they had a secret meaning, and maybe my eye is untrained but it did look strange. Even the structure, going so fast for the climax and then taking its time to end and trying to offer some closure or what exactly? I mean you are left with a little over half of hour of..explaining the broken mind?

Anyway, all in all, it is not something to recommend, from my point of view, with so many other good ones out there, leave Darling for a lonely and curious night at most, when you want to see what the fuss is about, cause it will bore you and leave you completely unsatisfied.

Cheers!

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