How “Strange Darling ”filmmakers reinvented the serial killer thriller: 'We felt defiant'

Director J.T. Mollner and Giovanni Ribisi, making his feature debut as a cinematographer, flip the script on horror tropes in this soon-to-be cult classic.

Writer-director J.T. Mollner and Giovanni Ribisi, making his feature debut as a cinematographer, crafted one of this year's most unexpected horror-thrillers, Strange Darling, by doing something, well, a little strange.

Featuring standout performances from Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher) and Kyle Gallner (Smile 2), the film plays with the serial killer vs. final girl archetype while defying expectations at every twist and turn. And if it feels like the filmmakers are intentionally trying to surprise you, it's because subverting genre tropes was a part of the film's DNA from its earliest inception.

"I just had this image of a woman in distress running through the woods, and I saw it very clearly," Mollner tells Entertainment Weekly of his initial idea for the film (now playing in theaters). "She had hospital scrubs on, running in slow motion, and I could even hear the song 'Love Hurts' playing over this sequence. And I knew that it was something that I wanted to explore deeper, but I wasn't sure how because it felt like a trope: the archetypal final girl being chased by some sort of unspeakable evil."

As he continued thinking about the scene over the ensuing months, Mollner began to see the story come together in reverse. "I knew this chase sequence was happening and didn't know why. And then, when I realized what had happened to these characters earlier in the day, I started becoming very intrigued by this story. And I discovered the story in the same order that the audience does now," he says, referring to how the film unfolds out of order. "Once I got to the end, I was very compelled to tell it because I just thought it was such a fresh way to approach a subgenre that I love."

For Mollner, subverting expectations wasn't just a creative exercise; it was the only way to approach the well-worn genre. "You can't go up against movies like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Silence of the Lambs. You can't go up against serial killer movies and do it the way the heavyweights did and try to make a better movie or as good of a movie. It just doesn't work. And so the only way to approach a subgenre like this, for me, is to find a different entrance, to show it from a different perspective, and give the final girl more nuance and really subvert expectations, stereotypes, and things we expect from certain people and certain genders. That was interesting to me. And that's what we decided to play with."

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The film's plot, per an official synopsis, follows "a twisted one-night stand that spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree" — but to say much more would spoil its biggest surprises. "It was one of those scripts that was undeniable, and I had a fierce sort of reaction to reading it that I had to follow through on," says Fitzgerald. "It was very clear that J.T. had an intensely specific vision and a very specific way in which he wanted to tell this story and had fully fleshed out this world. I remember I finished the script, and I was at once both very sure that I had to do it, and very scared of what doing it would entail. And I think that whenever I get a little scared about something, it's usually a sign that I'm kind of going in the right direction, as weird as that may sound."

Describing her character, known as "the Lady," Fitzgerald teases, "She's someone fiercely looking for connection. She is someone who, at the core of who she is, desperately needs emotional connection. What you see in this movie is two people who have an undeniable connection with one another, and then there's a fundamental break and a fundamental betrayal. And then what happens next is all a response to that fundamental betrayal. What I love about the Lady, and what I love about this script, is that the whole thing for me, in some ways, is an allegory of a relationship gone terribly wrong."

Strange Darling's premise isn't the only thing that separates it from the pack. It's also a visual and aesthetic departure from traditional serial killer/final girl thrillers. That's where his first-time cinematographer came in. Known for his work as an actor, Ribisi has quietly been earning his stripes behind the camera for some time. "I've been doing cinematography in the background, professionally, for the past 15 years or something like that," the actor says. "But it wasn't something that I like to talk about. I wanted to really cut my teeth and pay my dues."

Mollner and Ribisi met through a mutual friend years ago and stayed in touch, sharing their work and bonding over their love for cinema. "Over the years, J.T. would send me material he was working on and vice versa. And then he sent [Strange Darling] to me two years ago, and I think within 15 minutes, I called him up, and I was begging to be a part of it. And then working on the cinematography was an evolution from that conversation."

To develop their visual toolbox for the movie, the duo spent the initial prep period "watching a lot of movies," Ribisi says. "For me, that time period is always really special leading up to a film. But with J.T., particularly because it was just the two of us taking four or five months and having a creative conversation that ultimately resulted in the movie." As for the film's bright color palette, Ribisi cites the movies Blue Velvet (1986), Cries and Whispers (1972), and Dead Ringers (1988), and the visionary duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as inspiration. "Those technicolor movies, like Black Narcissus, had all this beauty on the surface and almost any frame could be put up on your wall as a painting. But underneath it all, there's this darkness that's constantly trying to surface. And that's what we were interested in doing, that dichotomy with the look and the themes and not making it look like a traditional or modern dreary horror film."

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He adds, "There's so much content nowadays. It's almost like streaming services are buying it by the yard. And I think, almost as a creative exercise, it was about being reactionary. It was about looking and trying to assess what was going on in the landscape and doing exactly the opposite, even if it was wrong. And to J.T.'s credit, that takes guts."

"We felt defiant," Mollner agrees with a laugh. "It was really important for us to defy those conventions and lean into the fairytale aspect of it. A lot of the decisions in the movie, in general, were like, well, people don't do this in movies anymore. Let's do it because we like it and because it works for these characters."

Even the weather in the Northwest-set thriller is unexpected. "Most Oregon horror films are dreary and gray. And we went out there specifically during the bright summer months and used slower stocks outdoors to get that color saturation," Mollner explains.

Still, the director is quick to note that he's not the only filmmaker subverting the genre. “You look at Ari Aster's film, Midsommar. That movie's a bright daylight horror film. And I think it's a brilliant movie and I just love that film. A lot of our influences come from way back, and I know it's being done here and there, but it doesn't seem like the norm right now."

If there's one thing you can count on with Strange Darling, it's that nothing is the norm.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.