"Darling" (2015): Already, already! 

Talk about a movie that tests your patience.  Well, that's sure as hell not the recently released, exceedingly atmospheric Horror flick "Darling".  No, your patience won't be tested......because it'll flippin' be tortured all to shreds!  Good golly does it take an eternity for anything to happen in this thing.  And then when it finally does, you're like, "All that interminable build-up to this???"

Writer/Director/Co-Producer Mickey Keating clearly is trying to evoke the feel of late '50's/early '60's Hitchcockian suspense as his black and white film lens depicts present-day New York City, together with the story's main characters, as though what we are witnessing is somehow suspended in time during this bygone era.  Keating also borrows heavily here from Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" in terms of plot, structure, vibe and effect.  In step with what is an apparent homage to the classics, Keating gives a grotesquely macabre nod to Audrey Hepburn in what may best be described as a perverse version of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on a bad, and I do mean rancidly bad, acid trip.

Lauren Ashley Carter (whom Keating also directed in 2015's equally offbeat horror mystery "Pod") does what she can in the title role.  And she's really pretty effective as a lonely young woman gone nuts, or rather even more wacko, as would appear to be the case in "Darling".  There's even a Sean Young sighting (remember her, kids?) as a super creepy matronly type name of "Madame".  Ewww-hew-hew-hew.  But in the end, it's all been done before. 

And enormous quantum leaps better than it's done here, darlin'.

Video Review of Steven Spielberg's Directorial Debut

"Duel"!

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JOHN SMISTAD, "THE QUICK FLICK CRITIC", talks Steven Spielberg's Highway of Horrors Classic "DUEL"!! - YouTube