31 Nights Review: DARLING

Darling, a young woman, gets a job in a house deep in darkest Manhattan. The owner, about to flee to vacation, tells her that the previous house sitter threw herself from the top floor balcony. Oh, anything in the fridge is fine, call you when I get to the Hamptons. Bye. Darling sets to discovering the house but is soon beset by hallucinations and a twin curiosity and dread about the locked room at the end of the hall.

There are violently scratched messages in the bedside cabinet and muffled movement throughout the house. Her visions start coming in stabbing flashes and seem to involve her in bloody violence. While out on the street one morning she is stopped by a suited man who returns the crucifix necklace she dropped. She looks back in silent gaping fear. She follows him and locates his nest before primming up and luring him back to the house. The rest you will have to see for yourself (it's 76 minutes long; it won't kill ya)

What might have been a heavily derivative genre exercise smothered in student affectation becomes a lean and effective tale of mental disintegration. Yes, it's archly arty with its chapters and hipster ironic title font and ... whatever, man. But it also gets its work done. If it uses strobing it's unusually subtle. If the black and white reminds you of too many other movies it might be aspirational but it's still effective. The score is electronic and variously droning and screeching but it's appropriate. Is it a hip New York cover version of Repulsion? Pretty much, but you don't have to know that.

I don't want to damn this effective urban gothic film with faint praise, so instead of going on anymore about its self-aware style I'll mention the oddly icy warmth of its centre, young actor Lauren Ashley Carter. I have seen Carter in two other films and they and she are both impressive (The Woman and Jugface) and a look over her filmography bids me seek out more. From her Deneuve ice-slacker entrance to homicidal maniac, she takes us with her and we happily follow on behind. Like Deneuve in the earlier film, Carter presents her flawless beauty as a starting point to an arc that alienates us from it. We discover something (but not too much) of her history and where it has left her and if we are still hankering that a girl as cute as she should ruin it all with stuff like that we should take note of our own response as it is a major part of how this film works.

It might seem odd to say but this restlessly stylish film, in committing to its horror, is, for all its affected quoting and self consciousness does more to earn its genre stripes than many more self-avowedly unpretentious pieces from the last ten years. It might be pretty but it works.

Seen on Shudder