Don't Worry Darling / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Shelley in on the scheme the whole time or did Frank have her brainwashed like many of the other women were? Is her killing him to rebel and make a Heel–Face Turn or become the Dragon Ascendant? If brainwashed, did she regain her senses way sooner or only just recently?
Anvilicious: The movie is anything but subtle in its message that many relationships are abusive and see men try to exercise complete and total control over their partners. This culminates with the reveal that Victory is a virtual simulation that is just another tool of control that men can utilize to remove any semblance of autonomy from their partners.
Anticlimax Boss: Frank is set up as the Big Bad of the film, the enigmatic leader of Victory who has an almost hypnotic control over the men of Victory, and makes it clear to Alice he's aware of her growing suspicions and regards her as a Worthy Opponent. You'd expect them to have some kind of confrontation in the climax, but they never even interact; Frank's sole contribution to the climax is giving orders to his goons over the phone before being rather randomly stabbed by his wife.
Ass Pull: Frank's wife Shelley stabbing him for failing to prevent Alice's escape and declaring "Now it's my turn" comes completely out of nowhere and it's never explained what she means by that statement, beyond some hints she somehow managed to break out of the brainwashing; it probably doesn't help that it happens within the last ten minutes of the movie so there's not really any time to expand on it.
Complete Monster: Frank, the debonair head of the Victory Project, is a misogynist attempting to force his own view of the world "as it should be" upon the inhabitants. Allying with men who dislike the independence of the women, Frank has them implanted in a virtual reality to simulate 1950s-1960s California, with the women brainwashed into submissive wives for their husbands, only cooking, cleaning, and sleeping with the men due to most having no memory of their lives outside. When heroine Alice Chambers discovers and is rightly appalled at her consent taken from her, it is revealed Frank has any such problems conditioned and tortured by his men, with none allowed to escape Victory.
Critical Dissonance: It received a four-minute standing ovation during its release at the Venice Film Festival and news reports said it was well-received among the audience. Despite that, critical reviews during the general release were mixed to negative.
Don't Shoot the Message: There are a few semi-explicit sex scenes between Alice and Jack, with particular focus on Alice's pleasure. Olivia Wilde stated in promotional interviews she felt these were important to include, as many sex scenes in films tend to ignore or gloss over depictions of female pleasure, focusing more on the men and objectifying the women. However, lots of viewers felt that these scenes were unnecessary and undermined the themes the movie was trying to discuss; given that the central theme is about men dominating women and focusing on themselves at the expense of women's well-being, sex scenes of this nature can seem ill-fitting, not to mention The Reveal that Jack forced Alice into a simulation and had her brainwashed into being his adoring housewife sends them straight into unpleasant Questionable Consent territory. Wilde's intention with the sex scenes isn't bad in theory, but several reviews pointed out that this movie wasn't the right place for it. Notably, Florence Pugh expressed her opinion that the discussion around the film put too much emphasis on the sex scenes over the actual plot.
Esoteric Happy Ending: Alice wakes up in the real world, where we have to assume she is still cuffed to her bed and now her dead husband is lying there beside her. There is virtually no way for her to get out of her restraints and if the place where she's being held is soundproof, screaming for help won't do a single thing and she'll die slowly from hunger and thirst. Not a whole lot better than her situation inside Victory, really... Of course, it's just as likely, if not more, that she'll wake up in a cheap room with crackerbox walls, sloppily restrained by a careless, lazy man who didn't have to worry about her physically escaping so much as falling off the bed.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Lots of people who read the earlier versions of the script have stated that while they are still flawed in places, it would've been better if the movie stuck had closer to them, feeling those iterations explained the plot in a more straightforward and effective way than the final version, which was criticized for being overly vague at times. Many people also felt the original portrayal of Jack and his relationship with Alice was more consistent and fitted the themes better; in the original scripts Jack is a more sinister, controlling character and his relationship with Alice is more obviously troubled (e.g. Alice is depicted as unsatisfied with life in Victory and Jack is pressuring her to have kids; in one version it's also revealed Alice had filed for divorce in the real world, while in another they were never even in a relationship and Jack was just obsessed with her), while a complaint about the finished film is that the narrative seems confused about how sympathetic Jack is meant to be.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Chris Pine playing a seemingly affable, but unexpectedly disturbing despot and Control Freak here tricking people into blindly trusting him when about a year later, he'd ended up playing an incredibly similar role in a far more family-friendly and fantastical movie too.
Just Here for Godzilla:
- Many tuned in to see how Harry Styles did in his first lead role.
- The film has also garnered attention for being Florence Pugh's second horror (or at least horror-adjacent) movie after Midsommar.
- Olivia Wilde's comment that Chris Pine's antagonistic character is based on the controversial web figure Jordan Peterson has (ironically) caused controversy, not helped by Peterson himself reacting with a rant on the matter, making this arguably a case of a bad reputation drawing more attention.
Memetic Mutation:
- People saying that a movie about the behind-the-scenes drama would make a more interesting movie.
- Jokes about Chris Pine being the Only Sane Man on the set following reports of the movie's Troubled Production that consistently all but left him out of it.
- Similarly, people have had a lot of fun with the film's title, joking that it's a False Reassurance from the cast and crew or responding to rumours about production with "worry, darling".
- "My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie. Like, you know, go to the theater film movie. You know, kind of the reason why you go to watch something on the big screen" ^Explanation
Nightmare Fuel:
- During the montage when Jack is signing up for the Victory project, he's asked if he has a "pre-existing relationship" with Alice. Not the nature of the relationship, but whether he has one at all. The concept of a partner forcing someone into such a situation is horrifying, but this implies that some trapped in Victory have been brainwashed into "marrying" complete strangers.
- The hallucinations that Alice experiences tend to be quite unsettling and creepy. What doesn’t help is that many of them are accompanied by off-putting, hellish noises.
Older Than They Think:
- The idea of a virtual reality where people are plugged into the fantasy of a idealized 1950s was the basis of The Evil Within 2, with it similarly being revealed to be a horrifying nightmare run by sketchy people.
- The film's core concept of a man using VR to live out a nostalgic fantasy based on 20th-century media and cultural tropes, and a female protagonist fighting back against this fantasy is a pretty good summary of Black Mirror: USS Callister.
Overshadowed by Controversy: Even before its release the movie was better known for the intense celebrity drama surrounding it than for its own merits, with there being numerous reports and rumours of the cast and crew clashing with each other on and off-set (see Hostility on the Set and Troubled Production on the Trivia page for details). As the film itself got a fairly lukewarm critical reception, some people find the behind-the-scenes drama more compelling than the actual movie.
Padding: Early on, there are many scenes of Alice doing domestic tasks, Alice and Jack attending parties or hanging with friends, Jack and Alice having sex, and lots of repetitive, creepy imagery and unconnected spooky events that no one pays much attention to. Most of these scenes contribute little to the plot, even including the strange and creepy events; although Alice is shown reacting to these things, she often seems to forget it happened in the next scene as opposed to it having a long-term impact or providing hints towards The Reveal (it can be assumed most of them are glitches in the simulation and they have no deeper meaning beyond this). Removing some of these scenes would probably have cut down the runtime significantly, especially as they make up a lot of the first half of the movie.
Slow-Paced Beginning: A big criticism of the movie is the lethargic pacing in the first half of its two-hour runtime. The first third mostly consists of mild domestic drama and Florence Pugh reacting to random creepy events more than actual plot progression or character development. Alice doesn't even fully grasp that something is wrong until she sees the plane crash and stumbles onto Victory headquarters about thirty minutes in. Things get more interesting after there's a clearly established mystery to solve, though some viewers thought the story could've just started closer to this point because of how pointless many of the earlier scenes feel. Even then, the pace of plot development doesn't pick up by much until the halfway point; consequently, the final act is seen as having the opposite problem of being paced too frantically in order to wrap things up that weren't expanded on earlier.
So Okay, It's Average: The cinematography, score, production design, unsettling atmosphere and performances (especially from Florence Pugh) have been mostly praised, but it's also felt the movie has pacing issues and a disappointing ending that means it doesn't quite live it up to its interesting premise; many reviews have also pointed out that it doesn't do anything that other works like The Matrix, The Truman Show, The Stepford Wives, Pleasantville and several episodes of Black Mirror didn't already do first and more effectively.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Margaret seems like she should have had a bigger role. She was seemingly the first of the women to realize something was wrong and tries to convince Alice of this, implying she could be a potential ally or source of information. However, she mostly gets ignored until she slashes her own throat, after which she disappears from the film and isn't brought up much again (to the point even Frank appears to forget Margaret was the first to stand up to him and question things, instead treating Alice as the first one to challenge him). We never actually find out what happened to her, such as if she really died or was simply removed from the simulation (if it's the latter she could've served as a link to the real world). Kiki Layne later stated that many of her scenes were cut, indicating Margaret did originally have a larger role.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The movie tries to frame the situation as Jack, in addition to wanting to be able to have unbridled intimacy with Alice again, thinking he's doing her a favor because her work as a surgeon is so overwhelming. However, he's not only taking away the career that she worked so hard for, he doesn't give her the choice and commits Rape by Proxy. This makes it hard to feel even faintly bad for him, and Alice being forced to kill him just looks like a Karmic Death, despite her regrets.

YMMV / Don't Worry Darling

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