{"id":3147,"date":"2026-05-24T22:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=3147"},"modified":"2026-05-24T22:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:14:22","slug":"whos-the-killer-the-nonlinear-charms-of-strange-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/05\/24\/whos-the-killer-the-nonlinear-charms-of-strange-darling\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s the Killer? The Nonlinear Charms of \u201cStrange Darling\u201d\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So I somehow stumbled upon the film\u00a0Strange Darling<\/em>\u00a0(2023), which has become something of a cult classic. First: I\u2019m not a fan of serial-killer movies. The best of them thrill you with gruesome fantasies such as the \u201cbrilliant\u201d serial killer a la Hannibal Lecter, while the worst of them indulge in Rated R torture porn, like the\u00a0Saw<\/em>\u00a0franchise. When I read the description for\u00a0Strange Darling\u00a0<\/em>I was initially put off, thinking, \u201cOh, just another serial-killer slashfest.\u201d It has a 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating, however. That\u2019s good enough to make me wonder. Spoiler alert: It\u2019s hard to describe\/analyze this one without giving away some details.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First thing you as audience notice about this film is its nonlinear structure. It\u2019s divided into six chapters (a la Tarantino\u2019s\u00a0Pulp Fiction\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0The Hateful Eight<\/em>). But it begins with Chapter Three, in an action-packed chase scene. From that moment on you begin making judgements about the characters and situations, based on what you\u2019re seeing or being shown. Most of these are wrong, one way or the other. It\u2019s a twist on gender roles: In the initial scenes there are only two characters: a flirtatious young woman (Willa Fitzgerald, terrific) who seems to be playing a dangerous game of Take a Walk on the Wild Side, and a stern-looking suspicious dude (Kyle Gallner, nicely understated) who has a gun in an ankle holster. They\u2019re in his pickup, outside a motel, flirting. One thing leads to another and they end up in the motel room, frisky but not having actual sex. Foreplay, as it were. She produces some drugs\u2014ostensibly cocaine\u2014from her purse and announces it\u2019s her birthday. (I didn\u2019t believe that.) From that moment on the action gets ever more complicated, and it becomes obvious\u00a0Things are not what they seem<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the nonlinear chapters unfold you come to understand that context is everything. It’s not a matter of seeing is believing. It’s a matter of what you see can’t be understood without the linearity of what came before. When there’s no context for the actions we insert our own reasons and logistical frameworks\u2014which, in this story, are likely wrong. I liked how it subverted expectations. You think you know what\u2019s going on and then realize you don\u2019t. The acting and direction are first rate. (See the glowing blurbs on the poster image.) Ed Begly Jr. and Barbara Hershey are great as old hippies (who don’t deserve their fate). The end is harrowing and poignant. I\u2019ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not a matter of seeing is believing. It’s a matter of what you see can’t be understood without the linearity of what came before. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,470,471],"tags":[472,86,474,473],"class_list":["post-3147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strange-darling-film","category-cult-classic-films","category-serial-killer-movies","tag-strange-darling-nonlinear-structure","tag-film","tag-kyle-gallner","tag-willa-fitzgerald"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3152,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147\/revisions\/3152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}