Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★½ 5

  24

  I love it when random dudes watch classic horror films and think, "oh, you know what? *I* can do better.

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  Review by braden ★

  “I don't think you realize what a godsend you are.”

  Written and shot like an amateur student film, Darling is a poor homage to 60/70s psychological horror movies made by someone who doesn’t seem to understand the genre at all, let alone basic audience engagement. It’s told needlessly through chapters despite being less than 80 minutes long, it’s paced so inefficiently in a dim effort to be ‘intense’, and it looks so ugly in with unnecessary, self-indulgent black-and-white photography that doesn’t suit the setting or digital look at all. Lauren Ashley Carter clearly tries her best even with the pathetic material and direction she had to work with; but beyond that it’s just hopelessly flawed and unwatchably irritating.

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  Review by Ava ☭ ★★½ 6

  another really nice poster for a not too good movie :-//

  this is the kind of movie that would be nice to watch in a theater on a cold night when u r looking all pretty and well rested. this is not the kind of movie to watch when you stay home from school on a hot florida day and are watching this while looking and feeling absolutely fucking disgusting and stuffy and sneezing and having a sore throat and being on your period and u feel super shitty. i'm almost done with unbreakable kimmy schmidt season 2 and i love it.

  u can totally tell that this girl has a nose piercing but they made her take it off…

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  Review by Tony the Terror 🎃 ★★★★ 6

  I watched this back in 2015 when it was on Netflix and barely remembered it so for some reason I gave it 2.5 stars in spite of that because I guess I assumed I didn’t like it much. Well T, the truth is you actually didn’t like your drug addled self in those days now did you? 😩😏

  Self burn aside, I’m glad I rewatched this because it’s actually pretty great and I have genuine evidence to back that up in the form of my husband deciding to watch it with me and also liking it. I mean, that’s practically science!

  I always feel like I need to add the disclaimer that I love haunted house movies so my rating…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★

  "You're one of the good guys?" - Darling,

  A bizarro shining, black and white film school chic movie about a house-sitter who experiences bizarre shit while house-sitting a big place.

  You know how sometimes you visit the place of your artsy friend and they'll have black and white pictures on the wall that they took...and they're framed...and it's like the photos are nice and fine and all but you can tell the friend thinks the photos are far more artistic than they actually are... that's how a lot of what watching this film feels like.

  There are creepy moments but mostly it's young director Mickey Keating camera-lusting over the star, Lauren Ashley Carter, who is the highlight of the film. It is only 75 minutes so sure, watch it, but don't expect a ton.

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  Review by Dan Abel ★★★½

  Darling takes a job as a caretaker for an old house in New York City. Upon accepting she is told that the last caretaker committed suicide by throwing herself off the balcony. As the nights go on she descends into madness. Is it supernatural or is she just insane?

  I randomly stumbled upon Tony The Terror's Review of this film while bored at work earlier today, and it sparked me to bump Darling to the top of my watchlist. I was surprised that I'd never heard of it because it sounded like something that would be right up my alley. In the first five minutes I was convinced that I was going to totally love this film and fortunately I…

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  Review by Dawson Joyce ★★★★½

  Led by Mickey Keating's excellent direction and Lauren Ashley Carter's fantastic lead performance (indeed the Audrey Hepburn of indie horror as the trailers and reviews have stated), Darling is a descent into madness story that's as stylish in its look and feel as it is chilling and undoubtedly macabre in its tone and atmosphere.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★

  Did you hear the one about the girl who was all alone in the big old house and then she went crazy? Oh, right, you did.

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  Review by Emily Housel ★½ 3

  this movie needs to take a chill pill

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  Review by Björn ★★★★

  The screetching of the painfully distressing sound design and the hallucinatory surreality of the imagery stab their way through this twisted psychosexual tale, with at its core this beautiful, yet demented lady called Darling.

  It's a consistently unsettling fable, inspired by both Hitchcock and Argento, and although it's wearing its inspirational sources on its sleeve, it's creatively bent into a satisfactory vivid whole as artistic as it is tense. Brilliantly captured, atmospheric and hard to digest, this is a bizarre oddity of a rare beauty that's not often found anymore in modern cinema.

  Lauren Ashley Carter gives a stunning performance. Part female Norman Bates, part demented angel but entirely original and captivating, her appearance works out exactly the right way throughout as the plot is confusingly blurring the lines between psychological and supernatural horror, psychosexual thriller and slasher in freakish, yet classy fashion.

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  Review by Jacob Knight ½

  New Rule: if a young filmmaker wants to make a Polanski or Lynch riff, they should be required to submit a 2000 word minimum essay explaining that they understand what makes those movies work. Abysmal.

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  Review by RobynSummer ★½ 10

  Darling had potential. The story of a person slowly losing their mind due to isolation, past trauma, and a possible haunted house, could have been interesting. I'm a sucker for black and white cinematography, and there were some appealing and unnerving visuals here. Lauren Ashley Carter does a great job as Darling, and her expressive face adds a lot of emotion and intensity.

  Unfortunately, this ended up mainly being style over substance for me. I saw a director trying to copy the styles of filmmakers such as Polanski and Lynch more so than paying homage to them. There were some solid moments, but I never felt like I was drawn into Darling's world like I should have been. Ideally, this…