A Stylish Sophomore Slump of Cinema: Olivia Wilde’s ‘Don’t Worry Darling’

As a director, Wilde prioritizes looks over content. You may have seen the film’s trailer, a highlight reel of Stepford Wives visual gags: eggs breaking with nothing inside, Alice wrapping her head in saran, Alice getting pressed to death while cleaning a window. They’re visually satisfying and no doubt creative, but don’t end up being relevant to the plot besides the general messaging that the “separate sphere” ideology is damning. Maybe this would have been groundbreaking during the rise of Second-Wave feminism but at this point has just become shorthand for a very limited view of women’s liberation.