5 Films You Need to Watch Before Don’t Worry Darling Hits Theaters

July 31, 2022

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After endless COVID-related delays, Don’t Worry Darling will finally hit cinemas on September 23. Inspired by a 2019 script written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke, the plot centers on a ’50s housewife named Alice (Florence Pugh), whose husband Jack (Harry Styles) has recently started a mysterious job in an idyllic community known as Victory. Predictably, there’s more than first meets the eye in this desert suburb, though, with Alice promptly turning whistleblower—much to Jack’s fury.

Ahead of the film’s premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, here are all of the movies worth revisiting to better understand director Olivia Wilde’s references for the Oscar-tipped project.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Before it veers off into sci-fi territory, Don’t Worry Darling dramatizes the quietly stifling nature of midcentury American life—highlighting the power imbalance in Alice and Jack’s relationship. Their vicious arguments (and Jack’s insistent gaslighting of Alice) call to mind Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates’s devastating 1961 novel, which Sam Mendes adapted for the screen in 2008. It’s worth reading in full before streaming the Oscar-nominated 2008 film, which reunited Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since 1997’s Titanic.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon, Apple TV, or YouTube.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

If you somehow missed the viral trailer, Wilde confirmed in a recent Vogue interview that Don’t Worry Darling will be “really sexy, in a grown-up way,” like many of Adrian Lyne’s various psychosexual thrillers. “I kept saying, ‘Why isn’t there any good sex in film anymore?’” I cannot, in good faith, recommend that you watch 9½ Weeks or Indecent Proposal (to say nothing of Deep Water), but it might be worth revisiting Fatal Attraction if you’re a truly dedicated cinephile.

How to watch: Stream on HBO Max, Amazon, Apple TV, or YouTube.

The Stepford Wives (1975)

If Don’t Worry Darling owes a debt to any movie, it’s The Stepford Wives; skip the 2004 film, and revisit the 1975 adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel instead. Katharine Ross stars as liberal Manhattan photographer Joanna Eberhart, whose husband Walter (Peter Masterson) convinces her to move to Stepford, Connecticut—only for her to realize that her fellow housewives are the victims of a dark, patriarchal conspiracy. There are shades of Levin’s earlier novel, Rosemary’s Baby, in Alice’s claustrophobia in Victory, too.

How to watch: Stream on Tubi.

The Matrix (1999)

While screenwriter Katie Silberman has reworked the Don’t Worry Darling script penned by the Van Dykes, the overarching concept still has a distinctly Matrix feel to it. Wilde herself has compared her version of the film to the 1999 blockbuster, in the sense that its leads exist within a distorted—and heavily monitored—version of reality. Another key reference: 1998’s The Truman Show, which famously sees Jim Carrey play a wholesome insurance salesman whose life is being filmed for reality television without his knowledge (“We accept the reality with which we’re presented…”).