Alice, Darling is a big screen domestic thriller of the variety that generally lives on basic cable, specifically Lifetime (unfortunate former tagline: “Television for Women”). The plot is about as straightforward as this genre gets: Alice (a mostly subdued Anna Kendrick) is in an unhealthy relationship with a domineering visual artist. Two friends invite her on a weeklong girls trip, at a lake cabin outside the city, to celebrate a milestone birthday. In order to attend, Alice tells boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick) she’s traveling for work, since he’d object to her leaving his side under any other circumstance. He, of course, eventually stumbles on an incriminating email and discovers the deception. Simon crashes the party with faux innocence and a big, menacing grin. Oh, there’s one additional (and totally unrelated) plot detail I should mention: right before his arrival, Alice learns to wield a giant ax, better known as a maul. You know, the log-splitting kind of ax. A maul. Anyway, you can probably imagine what happens next.
Not a whole lot, it turns out! If chills and thrills lustily come to mind, well then – so sorry, wrong movie. You see, Alice, Darling isn’t interested in the trashy scares of films like Sleeping with the Enemy and Enough. It instead delivers a simmering sense of unease that never quite reaches a boil. To her credit, director Mary Nighy favors naturalism over sensationalism. This means Alice, Darling is far more realistic than your typical Lifetime movie. Consequently, it’s far less fun.
The awful Simon doesn’t even show up to the cabin until two-thirds into the movie’s 90-minute runtime. So, Nighy (a first-time feature-film director) and screenwriter Alanna Francis (who wrote 2019’s The Rest of Us) have to establish the stakes by externalizing Alice’s psychological dread, mostly through faraway eyes and body horror (she literally pulls the hair from her head) as an iPhone chimes, hour after hour, with text notifications from you-know-who. Our protagonist does her best to act normal around those friends (played capably by Wunmi Mosaku and Tiio Horn). But images of Simon abruptly flash across the screen here and there, reminding us exactly who and what are at the forefront of Alice’s mind throughout the trip.
Nighy’s penchant for realism doesn’t translate to the film’s central relationship, which feels as authentic as a studio’s backlot. We spend all of Alice, Darling with a trio of women who don’t seem to have ever liked one another, regardless of the conspicuously placed childhood photos of them hugging, or an entire scene that highlights their shared love of Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” (can’t lie, it’s a nice touch). Lifelong friendships do, no doubt, grow apart over the years. The film, however, posits these three friends remain tight. Hence the celebratory trip, which notably includes no other attendees.
Well, until he pulls up. That’s when things really fall apart. Or, to be more precise, when everything prior never quite pays off. Simon’s appearance, out of nowhere, indeed jars, disquiets and maybe even unsettles the viewer. But the villain never gives us a single, meager jolt. A thriller without thrills. That is just deadly.
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
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