Strange Darling 4K 2023 Ultra HD 2160p

A man and a young girl met by chance in a bar. With each new date, their relationship became more and more bizarre. He chases her across the city - his hands are covered in blood, but his thirst for murder has not yet receded. The girl seeks help from every person she meets, but everyone who tries to help her dies.

User Review
“Strange Darling” isn't the unequivocal indie horror sensation that ‘Barbarian’ once was, but it's still a horror event that expects to play the same card as Zach Cregger's debut. J.T. Mollner armed himself with 35mm film (as announced in the credits), a couple of twists and brought in some great actors to turn genre cat-and-mouse upside down. The director and screenwriter of “Strange Darling” in one person divided the tape into six chapters, then mixed the parts in any order and in the final set the epilogue on the bloody mess. It was charming, but not as stunning and unexpected as the headlines promised.

The audience will hear the song Love Hurts more than once and more than twice during the short timing of an hour and a half: the cover starts the race - a blonde (Willa Fitzgerald) in a red robe escapes from a hunter with a double-barrelled shotgun. Why a hunter? Nothing concrete, just a guess due to yellow diopter glasses and a red plaid shirt. The biography of the spunky lady is also speculative. Perhaps the brightly colored uniform suggests she's a fugitive criminal, or maybe she's a house painter and paints houses. So far, any versions have a right to life, but at the end we're bound to find out what really happened. The opening credits state that the tape is based on real events and the monstrous actions of one of the creepiest maniacs in the history of the States, who has taken over the scenic forests and lakes of Idaho and Oregon from 2018-2020. Tru-crime fans start going over familiar names and geolocations in their heads, and Molner gets down to chapter three, where a fugitive asks for help.

With the gesture of a well-mannered movie critic, readers should be warned at once: do not continue reading the text if you are afraid of hints of spoilers or even afraid to know that there are plot twists in the movie. By and large, the acrobatic coup plot is dramaturgically all Strange Darling has, and therefore it's not fair to rip off the director at all. On the other hand, it's not the most rooftop plot twist - as if it's too humble a treasure to qualify as the rich harvest of the horror season?

The same “Barbarian” truly wowed even sophisticated viewers with its sudden change in chase trajectory, but remained a perfectly competent and thoughtful horror even as plot pirouettes were declassified. Despite the mosaic reproduction of events, it's as if Strange Darling doesn't need to be looked at in all its glory as a framed canvas. The movie somehow moves horizontally, aiming for the finale: a frantic run from point A to point B, where the audience is gradually given snippets of the track and pit stops of each of the race participants.

Willa Fitzgerald's performance really hooks and mesmerizes - animal organics accelerates the action and infects the frame with pulsating energy. Mimicry, plasticity, the entire body of the actress boils with anger and energy and can hardly slow down. Silent charismat Kyle Gallner (“The Passenger”) is unstoppable and bribes with unhurried determination. But the most unexpected part went to actor Giovanni Ribisi, which the public mainly remembered as the younger brother of Phoebe from “Friends”. He took the role of the operator of the picture and to shoot on film really approached with cinephilic courage and ingenuity. Many of the shots stick in the memory with the composition and lamp charm of grainy film.

The visual and aesthetic part of the tape, the drive brought to the maximum by the actress significantly dominate the content. The reception is more interesting than the essence itself, and a series of deceptions and deceits are not performed skillfully enough to completely replace the dramaturgy without feeling the loss of the script. “Strange Darling” has the potential to appeal to indie horror fans, but hardly has the potential to be the surprise network hit of the season. There's plenty of other dangerous undead coming out on Halloween.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (69.6 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#French: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
#German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH, Arabic, German, Spanish (Latin American).