Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Purely Joyful Movie!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

This film was just too pretentious for me to really get into in any meaningful way. I felt like it was trying way too hard to be some kind of quirky, black and white art-house movie and wound up putting more effort into this contrived style rather than making a movie with any substance. Director Mickey Keating — who also directed Pod, which I reviewed recently, which has literally all the same main characters minus Sean Young, as well as the same music composer AND same cinematographer — definitely knew what kind of mood he was aiming for, but he forgot to put any deep thought into things like dialogue or getting a strong performance out of his characters. I'm not entirely surprised, since Pod had the same issues for me — a good shell of a movie but no substantial filling."Darling" (she is given no other name), played by Lauren Ashley Carter, is a mysterious young girl who is tasked with watching an old, beautiful apartment in the heart of New York City while its wealthy residents are away. She is warned that a previous caretaker threw herself off the balcony, and there is talk of the apartment itself being haunted. Throughout the short time that she is house sitting we watch her descent into madness before her tragic end.** SPOILERS! **I guess my biggest issue with this movie is, as I mentioned, the fact that Keating's focus on style and mood seemed to trump his effort to build a meaningful character with Darling. He had this great opportunity to delve into the topics of gentrification, urban isolation, the trauma of possible sexual assault, and mental illness, to name a few, but he seemed to prefer to simply have a pretty girl stare blankly into the camera. We really never get to know much about her aside from studying every facet of her face since she probably stares into the camera for half the damn movie runtime. I had high hopes when the movie opened up with some impressively stark shots of the city — it's a rare treat when a movie seamlessly blends genuine terror and character development with an abundance of aesthetic beauty — but alas, all I got were some cool upside down shots of skyscrapers and enough shock cuts to make me never want to see another one again in my entire life.All of the mentions of a paranormal side of things — the apartment being haunted, the previous caretaker committing suicide, the mention by her date that a conjuring of the devil was once attempted in the building — are all sadly glossed over, despite the fact that they could have been interesting additions to the plot if they were explored a bit more. It does what many other greats before it have done — blurring the line and making us wonder what is truly paranormal and what is a product of spiraling into madness — but it just doesn't do it nearly as well.The murder of her date was unexpected, and somewhat shocking to witness — him gasping awake unexpectedly and the subsequent suffocation with the plastic bag were particularly hard to watch. But ultimately, like most aspects of the movie — I mean, come on, it's broken into chapters for some inexplicable reason — I felt like it was trying a bit too hard.Then the ending just gets plain cheesy, with her talking to Madame on the phone, hinting again at her past trauma, and saying "I think I'll become one of your ghost stories now" *eye roll*.Overall, YAWN. Pretty to look at? Sure. But I would have preferred it spend more time making me think — or, hell, scaring me — than repeatedly juxtaposing her blank expression with a strobed shot of her screaming face.

Shot in black n white, arranged in non-chronological order, and evidently influenced by Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy (especially Repulsion), there is no denying that Darling is a stylishly directed feature but in its overambitious attempt to homage the notable horror classic, it ends up becoming an overbearing & convoluted mess.Set in New York, the story of Darling follows an unnamed young woman who agrees to house sit at a large mansion that appears to have a notorious past. With nothing to do & unable to kill time, she begins to lose her grasp on reality as the extended exposure to the isolation that abounds the empty mansion triggers her descent into madness.Written & directed by Mickey Keating, Darling is his tribute to the atmospheric chillers of the 1960s but the film lacks an identity of its own. Throughout its 78 minutes runtime, it applies tricks such as sporadically cutting to maniacal frames, screeching noises for its score & mindless meandering but all its intricacy lies only on the surface, for it is hollow from the inside.The monochrome filters, confined setting & clever use of camera do manage to bring an unsettling element into the picture but the narrative is simply out of focus and fails to capitalise on that. The only one who is actually able to redeem something out of this whole clutter is Lauren Ashley Carter who tries her best to make her character work and chips in with a violent performance.On an overall scale, Darling finds its filmmaker succeeding at replicating the look of Repulsion but he is unable to add the same level of thematic depth which turned that psychological horror into a genre classic. Deficient in numerous storytelling aspects & pretending to be something it isn't, this artistic endeavour bounces all over the place yet in the end, finds itself not far from where it started. Skip it.

The first part (I only watched it for 30 minutes, got grossed out by graphic stabbing scene) was good.Great acting and camera work.I'll go back, see the rest another time! I only learned Sean Young in is the movie as "Madame" after I researched to the movie on WWW.IMDb.Com.I doubt "Madame" as the landlady seen at the start of the movie in the opening scene with Lauren Carter (the star of the movie who played "Darling," and did a great job!). Sean Young was a great beauty when she was a young girl in Bladerunner (1982) and No Way Out (1988), and is only in her 50's, probably is still good looking. The landlady I saw was not, but who knows? Maybe Sean had a lot of makeup on or fell on hard times. I only saw about 20 minutes of so of the movie (until the part where "Darling" violently stabs a guy she picks up in a bar.....nice "regular guy" type guy who didn't expect to be murdered!).I saw this movie in a strange movie house for experimental movies called "Zoetropolis" located at 315 James. St. in Lancaster PA USA, and had just come from a terrible dinner I ate (and paid $60 for at the Lancaster Arts Hotel very near the Zoetropolis location (which movie house is in an old industrial building and doubles as Yoga teaching place!).The candy I bought before the movie at the Zoetropolis for $3 was also terrible, and the after taste of the bad dinner didn't go away.All this made it hard to watch the movie and give it a chance. I was jumpy, and couldn't stomach the slasher stabbing scene (I'm a retired 72 year old movie actor, and never got used to the modern slasher horror movies the younger people love so much and can't get enough of ....Nightmare On Elm St. and all the movies which came after that for decades!).I really did like the opening of the movie, which reminded me of Woody Allen's Manhattan (1980) movie showing New York City (Manhattan) in black and white outdoor scenes on a wet day, the office and apt. buildings, etc. etc. Great images.I also liked pretty Lauren Carter. She plays "Darling" and does a very good job.She is very pretty, very big eyes like an old time "Keene" drawing of orphan girls with big eyes.She is very short (only 5'1") and the photographer didn't hide that well, or try to hide it at all.She might become a pro model is the short stature doesn't get in her way, or if she can sell employers on shooting around the fact there is not much of her there.She is very pretty, and has good curves in all the right places. There is a frontal nude scene from the waist up, and she looks very good in that. Could do nude modeling and glamor modeling if she wanted to, and use that clip in her portfolio.I was reminded of Anne Paillard (of France), the famous fashion model (tall and skinny) who became a movie star of fame when she was chosen to play "Nikita," the French govt. paid assassin working for the govt. in the movie titled "Le Femmme Nikita" (1992 or so).Lauren Carter carried the entire part of the movie I saw (about 30 minutes, maybe 30 minutes) and did a very good job. She was a one man band, and that is very hard to pull off....but she did it! I saw the movie at the wrong place (the Zoetropolis Movie Theater located in an industrial building in Lancaster PA at 315 James St.). I went outside to the "lobby" of the Zoetropolis to sit down and recover from the stabbing scene, but the man who sold me my ticket earlier told me to get out of the lobby because a big Yoga Class was going on...in the lobby. About 10 girls, a lady teacher, and a single man...the ticket salesman.

oh I was so disappointed in this. it was laughably predictable. the acting was overwrought and amateurish. how can washing your hands look so overtly dramatic? I'm quite prepared to deal with style over substance, but it sucks when there is neither going on. looked like someone watched some old French flicks and I thought "I can do that!" no sir, no you can't. I'd rather watch some old white zombie videos. I thought by having Larry Fessenden in it, it wouldn't be all bad. I was so wrong. oh Larry, what the hell? I guess the 60 seconds he was in it was probably the best part so there's that. avoid at all costs.