Strange Darling

“Strange Darling,” J.T. Mollner’s self-consciously edgy gotcha of a serial-killer thriller, is so high on its own cleverness that it never stops to think about what it’s actually saying. A pithy way to summarize this movie’s whole vibe would be “If Quentin Tarantino tried to make a ‘#MeToo movie.’” But that’s not fair to Tarantino, who, for all his flaws, is at least somewhat self-aware.

To give Mollner the benefit of the doubt, he may have been so impressed with himself when he came up with this movie’s twist that he didn’t realize that he had written a scenario that reinforces misogynist beliefs about women being untrustworthy, heartless manipulators who take pleasure in destroying decent men for the fun of it. (Apologies for the spoiler, but it’s impossible to articulate what’s wrong with this movie without at least obliquely referencing its back half.) The way that this revelation is presented suggests that its more noxious overtones are truly unwitting. But that doesn’t make their aftertaste any less gross.