The Promising Young Woman Vibes of Strange Darling

Although JT Mollner might have given the world a feature length debut that was a Western (specifically, Outlaws and Angels), he was so clearly destined to make a creepy statement thriller like Strange Darling. And yes, at times, it borders on the horror genre with its elements of gore, but, more than anything, Strange Darling is a movie about the psychological (and the psychosis of its protagonist). Particularly as it pertains to the ongoing and “unspoken” battle for dominance among genders. And, as is the case with the documentaries on Martha Stewart and Megan Thee Stallion, this feels like a timely theme to address in the current political landscape.

Just as it was when Emerald Fennell released Promising Young Woman in 2020, still fresh on the heels of the #MeToo movement that has since garnered an incredible backlash, as evidenced by the election of convicted felon, sexual assaulter and rapist Donald Trump to the presidency for a second time. With this in mind, the story of “The Lady” (Willa Fitzgerald) and “The Demon” (Kyle Gallner) is a well-timed window into the nature of power dynamics between the sexes. The power always being presumed to belong to “the man.”

Mollner banks on this assumption and inherent prejudice by opening Strange Darling in a very Quentin Tarantino-esque way (it smacks of the black-and-white scenes in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2). That is to say, with a low-angle shot of The Demon as he lights a cigarette and The Lady, who remains off-camera, asks, “So I have to ask you a question. Are you a serial killer?” Mollner then cuts to The Demon seemingly choking out The Lady in some nondescript room. Automatically, the viewer is meant to believe this man is the subject of the following title card and accompanying narration (with Mollner here mimicking the intro to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre):

“Between 2018 and 2020, the most prolific and unique American serial killer of the twenty-first century went on a calculated, multi-state spree that began in Denver, Colorado, continued through Grand Lake, and expanded across Wyoming and central Idaho before culminating in the dense forest of Hood River County, Oregon. Drawing from police interviews, detailed accounts of eyewitnesses, depositions and observations of various law enforcement, this is a dramatization of the true story of the final known killings in that rampage…”

Ah yes, one might say, like Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) in Kill Bill, this serial killer went on “a roaring rampage of revenge.” And, as Beatrix herself would add, “I roared, and I rampaged, and I got bloody satisfaction. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point…” Just as The Lady does to get to her own final trophy. Because, that’s right, the big twist of Strange Darling is that The Lady is the serial killer, not The Demon. Misleading though his name may be (more on why he’s nicknamed that later). It’s in Chapter 2: “Do you like to party?”—the narrative, by the way, is deliberately presented out of sequence to throw viewers off the scent—that everything becomes clear. Even if the shrewder viewer was able to pick up on the “curveball” many chapters prior. Indeed, Mollner’s maneuver is one that also harkens back to The Prodigy’s Jonas Åkerlund-directed video for “Smack My Bitch Up.” For, in the same way, Mollner turns the audience’s expectation on its ear by making their gender biases grossly apparent based on the assumptions they’ve made about who “can be” a sociopath/serial killer. Or rather, who the more likely candidate is between the two genders.

The Tarantino pastiche of it is also undercuttingly displayed by Miramax being one of the production companies behind the film. A.k.a. the prodco started by Harvey Weinstein, the man who set the #MeToo movement in motion at the end of 2017. So yes, there’s a tinge of irony that the company he formerly ran is contributing to films of this nature. Films that paint women not only as fully capable of all the same things a man is—including cold-bloodedness—but also dead-set on picking them off for sport partly in response to how predatory they are. Which brings us to why The Demon is named as such: The Lady also happens to have visions of demons telling her to kill. Whether those demons know something that The Lady doesn’t about who’s evil and who’s not is irrelevant. Because she’s clearly willing to listen to her psychosis.

On the one hand, some might say that Mollner is making a “dangerous” kind of statement about women at a time when right-wing men are at their most hostile, ergo most ready to jump on any piece of pop culture that depicts women as “psycho bitches.” On the other, it’s apparent that Mollner, in his way, is offering a feminist manifesto. Showing “the men” just what it is women are really capable of (see also: Charlize Theron playing Aileen Wuornos in Monster)—and how they’re often more skilled at those tasks that men are automatically deemed better in precisely because women remain perennially underestimated and overlooked.

And so, in the same way that Cassie Thomas (Mulligan) in Promising Young Woman is presumed to be the lost little lamb in whatever bar she picks up her male “victims” at, so, too, is The Lady (indeed, a bar is exactly where she picks up The Demon). Making it effortless for her to eventually do as she wishes to her formerly willing subject. But, of course, men become much less willing to partake in a bit of sexual deviancy when it’s so perversely enjoyable to the woman.

To initially lull him into a false sense of security and the belief that he’s “obviously” the one in charge, The Lady is sure to ask him such a question as, “Are you a serial killer?” By playing up the “scared little girl” archetype—while also arousing him with her “hardened shell” shtick—she conveys just the right amount of helplessness and eroticism that Cassie does. All while “dolled up” in the guise she knows attracts men (including the fact that wigs are used by both Cassie and The Lady as a means of seduction). Which brings up something that Katya (Sienna Miller) in 2007’s Interview tells Pierre (Steve Buscemi): “Why do you think it is that men like fishnet stockings so much? Fishnet stockings are a net, and the woman is imprisoned in this net like a fish. Do you get it? [And] high heels make walking very, very difficult. So you see, nothing would be more attractive to a man than a woman wearing fishnet stockings and high heels because she has trouble walking and she’s imprisoned within this net, and therefore he thinks she’s easy prey.” Never suspecting that she might the one to be feared. That she might be the one to let her “urges” get the better of her.

Needless to say, there are a handful of other movies (e.g., Hard Candy, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) that subvert the trope about men being the ones to fear. But Strange Darling is a more unique breed in that rarefied genre. A movie that absolutely refuses to, at any point, make its anti-heroine “act like a lady” (despite that being her “name” in the story). What’s more, the person who delivers The Lady’s final comeuppance is the most telling moment of all—a political proclamation in its own right about how white women are constantly given almost the same amount of “who me?” chances as men to avoid penalty for their actions. Emphasis on the word almost.