‘Alice, Darling’ is Indeed a Horror Movie

*Content warning: The film depicts an emotionally abusive relationship. While I like to keep my reviews lighthearted, I am in no way trivializing the subject.

Alice (Anna Kendrick) is saddled with an emotionally abusive boyfriend, Simon (Charlie Carrick), who controls every aspect of her life. When she lies to him in order to get away for a week with her childhood friends Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn), Simon tracks her down, with explosive results.

A big image system in the movie is eyes. We see tight closeups of Anna’s worry-face, watching Simon to gauge how he reacts and modifying her behavior accordingly. When Anna goes to the cottage with Sophie and Tess, we get more wide shots of beautiful countryside and the ladies having fun and Alice gradually (but not completely) letting her guard down. Bodies as a whole are emphasized, as in Simon’s dominance over Alice’s body. He decides what they eat; he always has his arm around her, reigning her in. He’s fiercely in charge of her sexuality. When they’re apart, he prompts her to send him pictures of her breasts, even when she’s out to dinner or on the supposed work trip. He won’t even let her shower by herself. The lake Anna swims in with her friends is heavily counterpointed by the shower, where she’s his prisoner. Seemingly the only thing Anna controls is her hair, which she pulls out when she’s overwhelmed by stress. Which is often. Really, her thick, gorgeous hair is a bit unrealistic–she should probably look more like this:

Maybe a little less lopsided. Aren’t AI-generated images as fun as they are terrifying?Okay, last one, promise:

It’s not a sensational movie, as in wildly violent or axe-murdery. There’s quite a low body count, in fact. The horror is built up from just how far Simon will go to keep his sway over Alice, and how much power she yields to him, and the realism makes it all the more disturbing. Simon is a quintessentially human monster, and his ordinariness underscores how much this really is happening in real life.

Sophie and Tess are a welcome contrast to Simon. A major theme is the magic of friendship. Yes, this kind.

Just imagine it with three ponies. Who have a deadly weapon.

I don’t have any major gripes. I would have liked more character development for Sophie, the voice of reason, and less about Tess’s angst over her stalled career. Check it out if you’re in the mood for something serious but ultimately uplifting. I lied, here’s the worst AI image yet, I found it in my media library and couldn’t resist.