Review: 'Don't Worry Darling' is a slick trip through suburban paradise, with a lot of ideas it can't or won't explore

Director Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” is a puzzle box of a movie, one where the unraveling of the mystery is more satisfying than what we find inside.

Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman (who shares story credit with brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke) introduce us to Alice and Jack Chambers, a loving and frisky young couple in a suburban desert paradise. Alice (Florence Pugh) fries up bacon and eggs for Jack (Harry Styles), who hops into his massive hunk of Detroit steel and heads to work at the top-secret Victory Project — a routine repeated by the other couples on their cul-de-sac. 

While Jack works, Alice cleans house, goes shopping with friends Bunny (played by Wilde) and Peg (Kate Berlant), or takes dance classes taught by Shelley (Gemma Chan). When Jack comes home, Alice is waiting with a glass of Scotch and a pot roast, and the promise of sex on the dining table. Their life seems perfect, in a dream house that seems like something out of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” (Co-writers Carey and Shane Van Dyke are Dick’s grandsons.)

The other constant in this perfect life is Frank (Chris Pine), the founder of the Victory Project and the benevolent boss to all the men in the community. With Shelley as his wife, Frank delivers backyard speeches about how this community is a family — and stays that way because everyone knows the part they play in it.

Alice starts to notice unusual things, like the discordant images that flash in her brain. She also listens when her friend Margaret (KiKi Layne) starts saying “we don’t belong here,” and draws the attention of the jumpsuit-wearing Victory Project Security and the project’s pill-dispensing Dr. Collins (Timothy Simons).

Wilde’s realization of this suburban dreamscape, and the cracks that start to become visible to Alice and to us, is striking — and proof that her directorial debut, “Booksmart,” was no one-off. The sunlit desert views, the sleek interiors, and the too-perfect cars and costumes combine to make this ‘50s setting feel too good to be true.

The set-up is so well handled that it’s aggravating when Wilde reveals the twist — which I won’t here, because of “spoilers” and because if I start lamenting where it goes wrong, I may never stop.

Suffice it to say that Wilde opens the door to some serious conversations — about women’s bodily autonomy, about fragile masculinity, about what’s love and what’s control in a relationship — and then stubbornly refuses to go through that door. Because of that lack of follow-through, “Don’t Worry Darling” is left being an intriguing idea for a movie rather than a fully explored one.

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language. Running time: 122 minutes.