Alice, Darling (2023)
Who Axed For This?
Read enough of my earlier reviews and you’ll find that I was once low-key obsessed with The Asylum. The independent film distributor is famous for releasing direct-to-video knock-offs of big studio films.
Back in the Redbox era, it was once believed, The Asylum made a killing by convincing half-asleep grocery shoppers that the new Transformers sequel had somehow landed on home video during its opening weekend. Same for Paranormal Activity, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, and dozens of others. By the time said groggy customer realized that they’d actually rented Transmorphers: Fall of Man, Paranormal Entity, or Alien Origin, the legend goes, The Asylum had already collected their share of the buck-fifty rental—regardless of whether the “film” had been watched, or the case merely flung across the room.
In recent years, Lionsgate has transitioned from a boutique horror juggernaut (think House of 1,000 Corpses, American Psycho, and the Saw franchise) to a refuge for Stars on the Wane (in what I can only imagine is a friendly-ish competition with Saban Films). Alice, Darling continues the studio’s prolonged flirtation with becoming The Asylum for Gen Z.
Make that Gen Zzzzz.
Last fall, I survived Olivia Wilde’s overlong, directionally confused, and politically childish polemic, Don’t Worry Darling—a film I vowed never to watch again, much less defend. Yet here I am, muscling through a critique of Mary Nighy’s boneheaded, navel-gazing pseudo-thriller, which has, if you can believe it, an even lower opinion of both men and women than even Wilde would be able to stomach.
On the plus side, Lionsgate had the decency to include a comma in their movie’s title.
Alice (Anna Kendrick) is a troubled late-twenties woman who seems to have it all: a nebulous, well-paying career; two lifelong gal pals; and a hot, loving British boyfriend named Simon (Charlie Carrick) who isn’t just a brooding, tortured artist—he’s a highly successful brooding, tortured artist. He used to be, anyway, before a fizzling flame put him on the comedown, with dutiful Alice assuming the role of one-woman pep squad.
Alice has her own problems, seemingly unknown to Simon. She plucks out clumps of her hair; has frequent, guilt-stricken sex fantasies about other men; and suffers ominous visions of Simon, whose mask of affection keeps slipping to reveal a not-so-nice-guy underneath.
She lies to him about a weekend getaway with BFFs Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn), claiming to have a last-minute work trip that she simply can’t get out of. She also lies to her friends about lying to Simon. While lounging around their comfy lake house, the trio is approached by local authorities who invite them to join the search party for a recently disappeared young woman. Alice wants to help, but neither Sophie nor Tess are interested in sacrificing their chill weekend to potentially save a stranger’s life.
Instead, they eat and criticize each other, criticize each other and eat. There’s a lecture about the amount of sugar in cinnamon rolls; there’s a reconciliation over donuts; the trio munches chips by the dock; Alice even chomps toast in the bathtub. In a fleeting moment of solidarity, the trio parties at a local bar and drunkenly sings Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” while stumbling home.
Note: This scene broke the one bit of restraint I’d enjoyed in Nighy’s film up to that point: Earlier at the docks, Tess had played “Stay” on her guitar and asked Alice to sing the words. Alice declined, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good for Anna Kendrick,” I thought, “She’s officially putting all that lip-synching-to-pop-songs Pitch Perfect nonsense behind her and blossoming into a legit, confident indie actor”. When she enthusiastically joined the “Stay” reprise, I just about threw my laptop across the room, Asylum rental-style.
Alice, Darling has two foundational problems. First, its silky robes of empowerment cover a boil-ridden body of anti-relationship toxicity. The trio’s “party” for Tess’s 30th birthday devolves into verbal attacks on Alice for staying with Simon. Tess and Sophie try throughout the movie to convince Alice that her best life would be lived as a single thirtysomething with a great career (and probably tons of cats). And, of course, Simon is revealed to be the misogynist monster everyone has rumored him to be (turns out Alice’s visions of his bad behavior aren’t all in her head). He shows up to the cabin to almost literally drag her back to civilization—stopped only by a callback to an axe that had been used to chop wood earlier in the movie.
There are no positive images of men in the film, not even in reference to past relationships (as far as I can remember). There is only cartoonishly scummy Simon and the constant carb-fueled cajoling by Alice’s girlfriends for her to dump his ass. This is a 2023 girl-power flick, yet Alice, Darling fails the Bechdel Test spectacularly (suspiciously, even), and I have to wonder if the filmmakers ever stepped back to realize just how full of miserable monsters their ostensibly uplifting movie truly is.
The second major problem is the script. It’s Maguffin City. Alice stumbles across an abandoned house in her woodland wanderings and discovers a somewhat new lipstick on the ground. Could it belong to the missing woman? Possibly. Maybe. It’s relegated to a narrative dead end once Simon shows up at the house.
Shortly after this discovery, we learn that the missing woman’s body has been found. Even if it’s logically impossible for Simon to have had anything to do with the disappearance/murder, the filmmakers want us to associate the two (at least subconsciously) in order to ratchet up the bullshit tension soon to follow.
When the aforementioned axe* comes into play during the last seven minutes, screenwriter Alanna Francis wants us to believe Simon’s life is in danger because he’s too rage-filled and stupid to back away from three pissed-off women brandishing a skull-splitter. But this isn’t that kind of movie. Larry Clark’s Bully is that kind of movie. Alice, Darling can only end with Simon waving his fist at Alice, Tess, and Sophie and saying, “I give it a week” before driving off in his truck with a smashed-out rear window.
Like the Asylum’s Alien Origin (their Prometheus rip-off), Alice, Darling promises danger, mystery, and (in this case) sex—but delivers confused actors running around the woods in search of…who the hell knows? Take out all the red herrings in this 89-minute navel gaze, and you’re left with a 90s teen soap subplot featuring wholly unlikeable characters from stem to stern (minus all the loser cops and locals who waste their time trying to find someone who’s probably already dead, amiright?).
If you’re looking for a real movie about people sorting out their relationships during a woodland retreat, check out Michael Glover Smith’s Mercury in Retrograde.
Skip both the Darlings.
Don’t worry: you won’t miss anything.
*Sorry, yes, it’s a maul (as Sophie constantly reminds everyone).
