Critic Reviews

All in all, in a time when so many movies evaporate from memory as soon as the credits roll, “Strange Darling” — love it or loathe it — is the kind of film that engenders conversation.

An excruciating chase film, a terrifying puzzle-box whodunit, and a testament to romanticizing even the darkest cinema in glowing 35mm, Strange Darling is an outright triumph.

Horror aficionados will find much to admire, but everything about this wild project defies generic expectations. It’s a thriller; it’s a cat-and-mouse game; it’s a truly messed-up love story.

Strange Darling is an original, well worth seeing — and then talking about.

Playing out in six, ingeniously scrambled chapters, this headlong thriller transforms a simple cat-and-mouse premise — and maybe even a toxic love story — into an impertinent rebuke to genre clichés and our own preprogrammed assumptions.

Strange Darling is a magic trick, showing you its cards up front and leaving your mind to fill in the blanks while it subtly performs a sleight of hand.

Although “Strange Darling” dutifully delivers white-knuckle tension and cinematic panache, Mollner’s savvy script also speaks to the unbalanced power dynamic a woman typically accepts when inviting the advances of an unfamiliar man.

Summer just saved its thrillingest thriller for last. Starring a wow Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald, this cinematic gut punch from JT Mollner brings one day in the romantic twisted love life of a serial killer to vivid life on screen. You won’t know what hit you.

An electric thriller with blood on its hands, flesh in its mouth, and deviance on its mind.

Strange Darling is a thriller structured as a complex series of surprises. Writing anything much about the story runs the risk of spoiling some of those surprises, so this will be a short review. Go and see it.