On a lonely country road, a woman drives with the pedal to the metal, looking terrified. The left side of her face is smeared with blood. On her heels, a man with tense features seems about to catch up with her. After this prologue, an intertitle informs us that the sequel, divided into six chapters, is inspired by a notorious case of multiple murders that occurred in Oregon. Now, let it be said, the thriller Strange Darling (Seduce Death) cleverly subverts the clichés of the serial killer movie.
First, the most important point: the film benefits from a mind-blowing, and increasingly mind-blowing, performance by Willa Fitzgerald (the series The Fall of the House of Usher/The Fall of the House of Usher) as the woman on the run. Kyle Gallner (Smile/Smile) is also very persuasive in that of his pursuer.
Written and directed by JT Mollner, Strange Darling is the kind of film about which the less you know before you go to the cinema, the better. For once, the hype doesn’t give too much away. The intriguing trailer gives a fairly accurate idea of the unbridled formal approach of the young filmmaker, selected in 2016 at Sundance with his first feature film, Outlaws and Angelsa very stylized western.
The staging of Strange Darling reflects real technical know-how and a real sense of the frame. Moreover, the small budget in no way hinders JT Mollner’s baroque sensibilities: compositions with bifocal lenses (split diopter) and other games with depth of field, close-ups so sudden that they almost induce vertigo, deliberately outdated zooms… Like the story, nothing in the image quite corresponds to what is expected, and that’s perfect.
Shot on heavily textured 35mm, the film displays a variety of cinematic influences, from Mario Bava to Brian De Palma to David Lynch (the distanced dialogue and acting is pure Lynch).
Tobe Hooper is also summoned to the ball of references, not only during the rural part of the action, but through the aforementioned intertitle: a pastiche of the already satirical one that opens The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
Dark humor
With its mixture of panache and savagery, Strange Darling keeps you in a state of fascination and anticipation. Although even in its most tense moments, the film refuses to take itself seriously, as evidenced by a constant black humor. It is sometimes on the verge of sardonic, but Mollner always makes up for it with a twist that gives the lie to the negative perception that we will have had the moment before because of this line or that development.
A non-linear division of the six chapters, which are presented in a clever disorder, completes the illusion while reaffirming the playful side of the exercise. Thus each episode shows a part of the whole, leaving it to the audience to complete, to imagine, the overall context.
And this is where the exercise becomes brilliant, Mollner constantly thwarting expectations while having fun with the clichés of the genre. This, with the delighted help of film buffs, who will have projected their preconceptions onto the story all along.