Spoiler alert: This article contains details about the movie “Strange Darling” which is currently showing in theaters. Honestly, there are some great twists in this movie. Go watch it first and then come back to read this article!
JT Molner is winning critical acclaim for his new thriller, The Strange Lover. However, the writer and director didn't even feel the need to make a film unless he was able to do something unique.
“There are so many great horror movies that are better than anything I could make because they’re so perfect, that I felt like unless we could find a different angle and turn things upside down, there was no reason to do it,” he says. “I was excited because it felt like, ‘Oh, this is a way to play with people’s expectations and assumptions.’”
Fortunately, Molner has written a thrilling and shocking script for “The Stranger’s Lover,” where the power lies in playing with clichés that audiences have seen in dozens of movies before. A beautiful woman covered in blood running from a man with a gun? That must be a predator stalking its prey. Memorable images like these are woven brilliantly throughout the film, but this nonlinear feature does its best to keep things from going off track.
The plot unfolds over the course of one night between two characters known only as the Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) and the Devil (Kyle Gallner). The characters' names on the title cards at the beginning of the film are one of the first instances of playing on expectations, as well as an early manuscript revealing that this is a story about a serial killer. As the duo discuss whether to head from his truck to a cheap hotel room for some late-night fun, the camera pans over a hidden barrel of verbatim Chekhov's Gun. Once they head inside and undress, they engage in some very The rough caressing, your breath holding, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The truth is out, as the lady turns out to be the serial killer, but before she can kill the demon, he fires a shot from his gun, and after both parties stumble and lose blood, he begins to hunt her down for revenge. Like the audience, the lady convinces the residents of the small Oregon town she escaped through to help her – but if they ask too many questions, they too are in danger.
The film's twists and turns continue until the final act, and Molner says the main reason it manages to surprise audiences is the performances of its leads.
“I talked to Willa and Kyle about always playing with the truth, the emotional truth of their characters and not being concerned with performing in a way that might mislead the audience,” he says. “They’re both great actors and we’re going to worry about misleading the narrative and the way the story is told. If you go back and watch the film, their performances are honest and people don’t feel like they’re being lied to. I think that’s why the film works for so many people.”
Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald in “Strange Darling.”
Everett Group
Beyond the script and performances, Molner also wanted the look of the film to play with audience expectations and create a more immersive experience. Actor Giovanni Ribisi made his cinematographer debut on the project, which was shot on 35mm film. The duo, along with production designer Priscilla Elliott, looked to films like David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” for inspiration in using color in dynamic ways.
“We wanted the look to be candy-filled with some grain,” says Molner. “We were in the mood to use color as a weapon. I went back the other day and watched Cries and Whispers . That movie is so beautifully shot. The red is so big and vibrant, so there’s always a sense of horror bubbling beneath the surface of beauty. We talked about ‘blood on the flower bed’ as our mission statement. That’s what we wanted this movie to be. We wanted it to stand out and be one of those things that you can’t forget the look of and how it makes you feel.”
Ultimately, the lady's journey ends in two ill-fated car rides. On the first ride, the police realize that she is the serial killer, and she confesses that she kills people who appear to her as demons, explaining her motivations and her previous discomfort with killing people just to get out of difficult situations. The way the confession is filmed teases that the police officer, whom she quickly kills, may actually be introducing himself to her as a demon. While Molner will neither directly confirm nor deny the possibility that the lady is the serial killer, she still confesses to being a serial killer. In reality She's a self-appointed demon slayer, which he says adds an important layer to her psyche.
“The idea was to create a serial killer who wasn’t necessarily mentally ill,” he says. “She has other issues but she feels remorse and compulsion to do these things, but she feels bad about doing them. There’s a justification for it, and there are all sorts of different motivations that are rooted in some kind of mental illness if you’re killing people. But we wanted to make sure that there was humanity in both of these characters. Even though they do horrible things sometimes, we wanted to make sure that we were showing their point of view.”
The film's final point of view is a continuous shot of the woman, who has been killed by a local gunman after she recklessly fires her gun. Holding on to Fitzgerald for minutes as the life drains from her character is a harsh and emotional conclusion to this harrowing film.
“The emotional ending was pretty much the same from the beginning, but in terms of how it ended physically, that scene wasn’t there,” says Molner. “We decided to include that in the third or fourth draft and have a three-minute lock-in shot or however long it ended up being. It was a big goal for me to make sure we got it right, and that was probably the hardest thing we did because we were in a race against time and light and we could only try it twice. But it’s so good that it worked out — it had a lot to do with Willa’s ability to hold the screen and demand your attention because she’s so charismatic. We didn’t shoot it any other way, we didn’t shoot any reverse shots there. We didn’t give ourselves any safety net.”
Director JT Molner on set in 2023.
Everett Group
