4/5 stars

Chris Sanders may not be as famous as some of his Pixar counterparts, but he is surely one of the finest animation directors in Hollywood right now.

He created the now iconic blue alien character Stitch in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch for his 2002 directorial debut, later following it with the equally popular How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods.

The film follows a robot – ROZZUM 7134, or “Roz” for short – washed up in its box on an island. Voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, Roz is a highly capable artificially intelligent being that initially mimics the gait of a crab to help survive this inhospitable environment.

Programmed to always complete its missions, Roz gets a new one when it encounters an egg, out of which hatches a baby goose – a runt named Brightbill (Kit Connor). To help her new charge, Roz is told to help Brightbill “Eat. Swim. Fly by Fall.”

A still from ‘Strange Darling’
| Photo Credit: X/ @strangedarlingx

In Strange Darling, writer-director JT Mollner seems determined to take viewers down a twisted rabbit hole of subversion, tapping into both the psychosexual intensity of Hitchcock and the fever-dream aesthetics of David Lynch, all while standing firmly in the tradition of grindhouse horror. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill slasher, though — far from it. Mollner crafts a fragmented tale of bloodlust and manipulation, flagrantly tossing the presupposed conventions of genre and gender on their heads.

The film kicks off not with a quiet buildup but with a full-throttle chase through a mid-western field. Willa Fitzgerald’s mysterious protagonist, dubbed “The Lady”, flees in slow-motion, her bloodied body bathed in the melancholic strains of Nazareth’s ‘Love Hurts’. These continued cinematic flourishes scream Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yet undercut themself with the unsettling dreaminess of its contemporaries, like Mandy. Mollner doesn’t allow for breathers, immediately thrusting us into Chapter 3 of 6 in his nonlinear puzzle. Chronology is established as irrelevant, and tension simmers through the film’s fractured structure, teasing out reveals just as quickly as it veers off into new directions.

From the outset, Strange Darling pulses with anxiety. The film’s core duo, the Lady and her pursuer, “The Demon” (Kyle Gallner), are locked in a disconcerting bit of debauchery that quickly shifts between moments of pure terror and sparing bits of relief. The Lady may seem like a victim, fleeing for her life, but Mollner’s direction refuses to settle into such clear binaries. Both Fitzgerald and Gallner deliver powerhouse performances that toy with our sympathies. Fitzgerald balances her character’s vulnerability with a looming edge, while Gallner carries a disarming mix of small-town charm and brooding menace.

A still from ‘Strange Darling’
| Photo Credit:
X/ @strangedarlingx

Much of the film’s tension is heightened through its visual and auditory design. Shot entirely on 35mm film (a choice that Mollner feels the need to announce via an opening slate) by actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, the grainy texture gives the film an eerie retro sheen. The camera lingers on wide landscapes and tight close-ups alike, transforming both into spaces of threat. Colours take on symbolic weight, with a recurring emphasis on red that suggests both passion and violence in equal measure. 

The sound design, however, isn’t as well-executed, and the film’s crucial early conversations are muddied by an imbalance that left me squinting for meaning. Though its intentions were presumably to disorient and heighten the mystery, it felt more like a technical oversight than an artistic choice.

What makes the film really stand apart is how it toys with expectations. Mollner knows exactly how we’ve been conditioned to make snap judgments about gender roles in crime and horror — and he weaponizes that instinct at every turn. The film teases you with questions you think you’ve answered (I won’t spoil the fun), only to yank the rug out from under you just as you’re settling in

.But as the layers of misdirection pile on, the intrigue begins to wear thin. The entire game hinges on one central twist and while it’s deliciously disorienting at first, once the rug is fully pulled, the narrative starts to lose a bit of its bite.

A still from ‘Strange Darling’
| Photo Credit:
X/ @strangedarlingx

Mollner’s taste for shock value also teeters uncomfortably close to gratuitousness. The Lady spends much of the film in various states of physical and emotional torment, and while the genre often thrives on discomfort, the relentless brutality begins to feel less commentary and more an indulgence in suffering. A late plot development involving a woman police officer also feels particularly misjudged, with a disturbing comedy of errors that risks pushing the film into dangerously misogynistic territory.

Still, despite its edginess, the film is undeniably stylish, and for fans of genre films that revel in artifice and unease, it offers plenty to admire. The film’s aesthetic choices, from its lush lighting to its serpentine editing, put Mollner’s confidence on full display. The film succeeds in creating a mood — one of oppressive dread and sickly seduction — that lingers long after the final frame.

In the end, Strange Darling stands as one of the boldest cinematic offerings of the year. Sure, it’s not perfect — beneath all the blood-splattered bravado, you might wonder if the plot’s substance fully keeps pace with its ambition. But in an ocean of cookie-cutter horror, Strange Darling is audacious enough to leave a lasting impression, even if it occasionally trips over its own self-indulgent shoes.

Strange Darling is currently running in theatres

On Swift Horses begins by showing us two images: sex and a deck of cards.

Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is making love to Lee (Will Poulter), a soldier on leave from Korea. Meanwhile, Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) has already been discharged from the war and is on his way to meet them both in Kansas, with only his bag and those cards. It’s almost Christmas and Lee wants Muriel to marry him, but she still hasn’t given her answer. Even so, the mood between them is light and fun.  When Julius arrives, for a moment, they are one big happy family in Muriel’s cozy, secluded home, which she inherited from her mother. Spacious, lived-in and lovingly decorated for the holidays, it’s the exact kind of house one could imagine raising a family in. But Lee has dreams of California, and he wants Muriel and Julius out there with him when the war’s over. It’s a dream that sounds too good to be true, but he doesn’t know it yet.

On Swift Horses is the kind of big, sweeping romantic drama that Hollywood just doesn’t make anymore. Director Daniel Minahan — a veteran of the small screen for many years, from Six Feet Under to Fellow Travelers — fills every widescreen shot with gorgeous landscapes and sumptuous colors, fully transporting us to a time when space was abundant and America felt full of possibility.

The film, based on the book of the same name by Shannon Pufahi, is an emotionally complex love triangle that branches out into something even more complex. Muriel marries Lee while pining for Julius — who seems to have much more complicated feelings for her, mixed in with a genuine love for his brother. Over time, both Muriel and Julius find other lovers, while writing each other all the while without Lee’s knowledge. Julius meets Henry (Diego Calva) while working at a casino in Las Vegas, and the two begin a passionate, caustic love affair. Down in the valley, Muriel skips work to fool around with her neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle), a woman living openly as a lesbian despite the stigma. With Henry, Julius finds a man even wilder than him, full of endless ambition. But when it comes to Muriel and Sandra, it’s harder to tell if the feelings are real.

Both Julius and Muriel love to gamble, but while cards are his poison, she prefers betting on horses. Much like their shared vice, their queer love lives are just as dangerous. Even though Muriel comes home every night to her husband, he knows nothing of the life she leads while he’s away. Hiding her gambling money in their home, Muriel tries to maintain her double life without having to take the real risk of being alone. And though she sees Julius as a coward for not coming home to her and Lee, his life of risk is more honest, and over time he begins to confront his own demons.

Elordi gives his best performance yet as Julius, showing his more sensitive, vulnerable side on the big screen for perhaps the first time. His love scenes with Calva are tender and exciting, the men exploring each other’s bodies in a dreamlike motel room. Calva proves his memorable turn in the underrated Babylon two years ago was just a warm-up. He’s got so much more to offer.

In perhaps her meatiest role since Normal People, Edgar-Jones gives an understated performance as Muriel, letting us get to know her through subtle gestures and expressions. Muriel is a woman hiding from her own potential, trying to fit herself into a neat little box, all the while knowing that she can’t breathe once inside. Poulter’s Lee is not cruel enough for us to root against him, but there isn’t much for him to do beyond stand in as a symbol of everything Julius and Muriel want to run away from. A talented comedic actor, Poulter is convincing as the stereotypical ‘50s husband, reaching for his piece of the American dream. And then there’s Calle, who plays Sandra as a woman in the middle — not wanting to fly free or hide, but rather make the world accept her for who she is right out in the open.

On Swift Horses is about the shapes love can take, the varied lives we live and the many different ways one can make a home. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Here’s hoping it brings the romantic epic back into fashion.