It's a great-looking package... but it's empty

Darling (2015)

Starring: Lauren Ashley Carter, Brian Morvant, and Sean Young

Director: Mickey Keating

Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Darling (Carter) is hired to be the caretaker of a townhouse while its owner (Young) is away. The house as a reputation as being haunted, and the previous caretaker killed herself, but that's just superstitious gossip and coincidence, right?

"Darling" is a stylish, beautifully shot movie that puts you in mind of the psychological horror films from the period in which it appears to be set--the late 1960s or early 1970s. The technical crew and director takes full advantage of the black-and-white medium and each shot is expertly framed and beautifully balanced. The use of sound (and its absence) is also used with great effect throughout the film.

Unfortunately, for all the technical excellence on display here, the film is ultimately unsatisfying because not enough attention was paid to character and story when the script was written. I have no fundamental issue with the fact that everything is left vague and there is lots of that here. For example:

Is Darling unbalanced as the film starts, or is she driven mad by evil entities in the house? Is the man Darling meets who she thinks he is, or is she just a lunatic? Is the homeowner aware of the evil in the house, and is she sacrificing young women to it? 

I could go on, but I'd be venturing into spoiler territoriy if I did. Still, the even the open questions I listed are important questions to the story. If the situations are handled correctly, they don't necessarily need to have a clear answer... but in  the case of "Darling", they aren't. In fact, as the end credits start to scroll to hard rock music, I wondered if writer/director Keating had even given any thought to those questions whatsoever, or whether he was just so set on showing off his talent for creating striking visuals and framing scenes that the fact his movie needed some semblance of a story, and that the main character needed to be more than just another part of the sets.

Actually, having seen Lauren Ashley Carter in a couple other films (the comedic horror short "Once Bitten" springs immediately to mind), I wonder if Keating wasn't directing her as if she was part of the scenery. Carter is capable of more than just the three modes we see in this film--emotionless, hysterical, and murderously flipped-out--and I think "Darling" could have benefitted greatly if she had shown some of that range. For example, if we had seen Darling having a semi-normal reaction to something, or even engaging in some activity that didn't seem like she going through a set of stage directions while wandering through the house--like listening to the radio while reading a book, or watching television while eating lunch. Instead, she is behaving strangely from the get-go. I have no idea if this is the case, but I wonder if Keating is a George Lucas-style director in the sense that characters are secondary to visual spectacle... and the actors are only there to make scene compositions look better.

In the end, I find myself unable to recommend "Darling" (and these days, I am trying hard to only watch and review films that I can recommend, because I am trying to be an oasis of positivity in a world's that's going to Hell). I love the moodiness of the picture, and it's spectacularly filmed... but it's ultimately hollow. Maybe that's exactly what the writer/director was going for? If so, perhaps I am just missing the point of it all--and I certainly missed the point of the "big reveal" at the end when Darling finally breaks into the mysterious locked room she was told by the home owner to never enter. I couldn't decide to whether this was a 4 or a 5 on my 0-10 ratings scale, but I eventually settled on the higher of the two. There's no denying that this is a visually impressive and atmospheric film.

"Darling" is included as one of the free streaming movies for Amazon Prime subscribers, so if you want to check it out--for the visuals, or to double-check my take on it--it might not cost you anything but time.