DARLIN' (2019)

Studio:      Dark Sky Films
Director:    Pollyanna McIntosh
Writer:      Pollyanna McIntosh
Producer:  Andrew van den Houten
Stars:     Lauryn Canny, Bryan Batt, Nora-Jane Noone, Cooper Andrews, Pollyanna McIntosh, John Spud McConnell, Geraldine Singer, Maddie Nichols, Mackenzie Graham, Jeff Pope, Eugenie Bondurant

Review Score:

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Summary:

While the ferocious woman who took her from her family conducts a desperate search, a scheming bishop plots to convert a feral teenager for publicity.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Dirty and feral 16-year-old Darlin’ is admitted to St. Thaddeus Hospital after being hit by an ambulance in front of the building. Kindly nurse Tony takes a liking to the girl, which puts him at odds with the hospital’s stern doctor regarding how to treat her unusual condition. Meanwhile, The Woman stalks outside looking for a clandestine way to get to Darlin.

The Woman slits the throat of homeless hypochondriac Charlie. The Woman cuts a chunk of flesh from Charlie’s stomach and presents it to Darlin as food from outside Darlin’s hospital room window. No longer wanting anything to do with her surrogate mother, Darlin closes the blinds on The Woman.

The Bishop, who oversees St. Philomena’s Catholic school for orphaned girls, sees an opportunity to prevent the church from closing his institution by using Darlin for publicity. The Bishop blackmails Sister Jennifer, a recovering junkie and former orphan, into participating in his scheme to reverse Darlin’s feral behavior.

Darlin is enrolled at St. Philomena’s. Other orphaned girls at the school include eccentric Billy, antagonistic Bug, a pair of twins, and another girl who harbors a pet mouse.

The Bishop and Sister Jennifer lock Darlin in an animal pen. While The Bishop records the provoked encounter on his phone, Sister Jennifer rubs dirt on Darlin and briefly wrestles with her when Darlin becomes antagonized. While showering afterward, Darlin remembers kissing a young boy.

Tony spots The Woman stalking around the hospital. The Woman sees that Darlin’s hospital bed is empty.

Sister Grace attempts to discipline Darlin when Darlin, who remains mostly mute, is unruly during her class. Darlin breaks Sister Grace’s ruler.

Billy acts out after Sister Jennifer takes over teaching. Despite Billy’s frightened insistence that she will behave, Sister Jennifer sends Billy to The Bishop’s private office.

Darlin escapes outside through a classroom window. The Bishop conducts a search with the nuns, but they are unable to locate Darlin in the surrounding woods.

Woken up while sleeping behind a dumpster, The Woman bites the throat of a police officer who mistakes her for a vagrant. The Woman takes the cop’s handgun.

The Woman infiltrates the hospital. Brandishing a blade, The Woman murders Darlin’s doctor as well as a clown.

Using a childhood bracelet bearing Darlin’s name, The Woman confronts Tony. Acknowledging what The Woman wants while fearing for his own life, Tony vows to take The Woman to Darlin. Unfamiliar with cars, The Woman freaks out while Tony drives.

Darlin finds Billy smoking and listening to music in the woods. Billy befriends Darlin by playing music for her. Billy escorts Darlin back to the school.

The Woman forces Tony to overturn his vehicle during an unexpected police pursuit. While Tony is treated for his injuries following the crash, The Woman escapes to an encampment populated by homeless women. Misinterpreting The Woman’s muttering of the word “darlin’,” encampment leader Mona welcomes The Woman to her group of prostitutes.

Sister Jennifer eventually breaks through to Darlin by teaching her to blow bubbles in her drink. Jennifer befriends Darlin by gifting her with a doll-shaped cookie that Darlin sleeps with.

The Woman kills a john who gets violent with one of the hookers.

Darlin continues acclimating to normal life and gradually begins speaking and reading. Darlin vomits from morning sickness after flashing back to The Woman forcing her to eat the flesh of the boy she was seen kissing in a previous memory.

As she becomes more accepting of Christian doctrine, Darlin asks Sister Jennifer if God will save her. During a private meeting, The Bishop becomes confused when Darin asks if God will remove the devil that is inside of her.

Darlin has a nightmare in which The Bishop tears up her feet with a metal scouring pad. Billy and Bug appear amusedly perplexed when Darlin later tells them she is going to be saved.

Tony asks about The Woman when he comes to visit Darlin at St. Philomena’s. Darlin cryptically explains that she had a “dog sister” who ran away after her “Peg sister” died giving birth to a stillborn baby. Darlin adds that The Woman wants the devil that is inside of her.

Darlin dances with Billy in the woods. Darlin tells Billy she is afraid the devil inside her will kill her when it comes out.

In his private office, The Bishop seduces Darlin into stripping off her clothes. The Bishop becomes repulsed when he sees that Darlin is pregnant. When the other orphans learn of her pregnancy, Darlin again expresses her fear that she will die if God does not save her.

The Bishop baptizes Darlin in a ceremony that he has Sister Jennifer record.

Sister Jennifer finally confronts The Bishop about his secret sexual abuse of the orphans, which includes victimizing her when she was a girl. The Bishop threatens retaliation if Jennifer tells anyone.

The Woman follows a pregnant couple into a maternity store. The Woman steals a wearable baby carrier. The Woman unsuccessfully attempts to steal a child in a public park.

During confession, The Bishop asks Darlin about her baby’s father. Darlin talks about the kidnapped boy that The Woman also raised in captivity. The Bishop vomits when Darlin describes how sinful it felt to eat flesh from the bodies of the boy as well as her sister Peggy. Darlin expresses her belief that God guided her to St. Philomena’s to save her from the same fate as her sister.

The Woman finds a newspaper article about Darlin. Thinking they are helping reunite The Woman with a daughter unfairly taken away by the government, Mona rallies the other homeless women to raid St. Philomena’s and take Darlin back.

The other orphans gift Darlin with a new bracelet for her first communion. Thinking it may cause a miscarriage, Darlin drinks a bottle of bleach prior to the event.

As a publicity stunt, The Bishop invites The Cardinal and members of the media to attend Darlin’s first communion. Tony and his boyfriend Robert also attend. The Bishop presents Darlin’s conversion as a remarkable achievement.

Before Darlin receives the Eucharist, Sister Jennifer publicly accuses The Bishop of sexual abuse. Darlin bites a chunk of flesh from The Bishop’s hand when he tries forcing the communion wafer into her mouth.

The Woman storms the church with Mona’s mob. The Woman slices a cameraman’s throat and impales The Bishop with a flagpole. Finally recognizing that The Woman is a feral murderer, Mona and the other homeless women abruptly flee with other parishioners.

Dying from her bleach ingestion, Darlin suddenly goes into labor. The Woman delivers Darlin’s baby. Now disdainful of her religious brainwashing, Darlin asks The Woman to take the child far away. The Woman leaves with the baby strapped in her carrier. Sister Jennifer, Tony, Robert, and Billy comfort Darlin as sirens are heard approaching.

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Review:

It’s convenient to call “Darlin’” a sequel to “The Woman” and “The Woman” a sequel to “Offspring.” You can go back even further if you’d like, as “Offspring” is also a sequel to series progenitor Jack Ketchum’s debut novel “Off Season.”

Really though, each plot operates independently of its predecessor, making “follow-up” or “spiritual successor” more appropriate monikers. Regardless of how one references these cinematic cousins, narratively they only share one character, or in “Darlin’s” case two characters, in common. So while “The Woman” adds context as a prologue to “Darlin’,” it’s not essential for getting the gist of this story’s setup.

When we left Darlin’ at the end of “The Woman,” she was a pint-sized tike being led into distant wilderness by the eponymous ‘Woman,’ an uncivilized savage who had just slaughtered the little girl’s family. When we reconnect with her at the start of her same-named movie, we see that ten years living with the cannibalistic Woman has devolved Darlin’ into a feral teen no longer able to communicate outside of grunts and growls.

Darlin’ harbors a secret that compels her to finally reject The Woman as a macabre mother figure. An ambulance accident then separates the pair when Darlin’ is admitted to St. Thaddeus Hospital. There, kindly nurse Tony emotionally invests in the unusual girl’s care, although administrators have other ideas.

A conniving bishop sees Darlin’ as the ticket he needs to stop the church from shutting down his school for orphaned girls. If he can rehabilitate Darlin’, surely he’ll be the talk of the town. The Bishop blackmails Sister Jennifer, a recovering junkie and former ward of the orphanage, into joining his self-serving scheme. Together they plot to make Darlin’ prim and proper once again, ensuring a camera is always at the ready to document Darlin’s “miraculous” transformation.

Meanwhile, The Woman grows hungrier and hungrier to reunite with her surrogate daughter. And The Woman is willing to literally bite through the throat of anyone who stands in her way.

“Offspring” primarily functions as a straightforward killer cannibal flick. “The Woman” adds cerebral chills to visceral thrills through its terrifying themes about malformed family dynamics. Those two films are comparatively simple to unpack in terms of intent as well as relative entertainment value.

“Darlin’” on the other hand, presents a more perplexing parsing problem. Its roller coaster car rides tracks of drama, comedy, and commentary at seemingly random intervals. Hitting these hills of stark horror and then sudden humor induces whiplash that scrambles perception. As a result, it’s difficult to discern how much of “Darlin’s” seriousness and pseudo-slapstick is by design and how much of it might be due to a slipped grip on inconsistent tones.

Making her directorial debut here, Pollyanna McIntosh’s accomplished career in front of the camera very much positions her as an actor’s director. She thus gives her cast a long leash to create their characters, to the point where some stray far enough away to play in separate performance pens.

Bryan Batt completely claws loose from any collar by portraying The Bishop as an extreme caricature of a media obsessed zealot deranged by his own doctrine. Batt’s exaggerated embodiment of the manicured sleaze pitches itself perfectly for parody, although Spinal Tapping the volume knob on his buffoonery makes him ear-achingly louder than anyone else.

Cooper Andrews applies an agreeably softer touch to Darlin’s nurse Tony. Tony endears himself to the audience quite quickly, emanating empathy with an easy manner that doesn’t require an excessive amount of screen time to establish. Script-based choices for his characterization come with some questions. For instance, Tony’s boyfriend Richard pops in for a pair of appearances, yet this romantic relationship adds no appreciable insight into Tony regarding his affection for Darlin’.

The seesaw wobbles even more for Nora-Jane Noone’s Sister Jennifer. Even though she is vaguely blackmailed into abetting The Bishop, Jennifer doesn’t express much abhorrence for the situation until she has long been complicit in the conspiracy. Jennifer spends so much time as The Bishop’s willing lackey that when the time comes for her moral turn, her personality hasn’t built the collateral necessary to fund truly moving moments.

As Billy, an eccentric orphan who befriends Darlin’ by showing her how to break the school’s strict rules, Maddie Nichols emerges as the unsung hero on the roster. Others will write the words that rightly lift Lauryn Canny as the movie’s anchor, or Pollyanna McIntosh for her steely-eyed third go as The Woman. But Nichols sweetly balances unhinged cockiness and sympathetic vulnerability to put additional human heart into the painful coming-of-age arc affecting the orphaned girls.

“Darlin’” hits heavy notes concerning sexual molestation, marginalization, abuse of power, and misguided dogma. Sadly, such subtext tends to drown in the din of bloody sight gags and several sore thumbs of comical characterizations.

McIntosh clearly wants “Darlin’” to have some amount of comedic value. Just how much however is unclear.

There’s no reason for The Woman to murder a clown in the hospital’s children’s ward other than highlighting the visual absurdity of seeing her slice up a Ringling Brothers reject. The same goes for a smash cut to The Woman banshee howling while trying to comprehend her first car ride, which incidentally, is a strange inclusion to begin with. It’s not like The Woman is entirely unfamiliar with modernity. She should certainly know what an automobile does in principle, even if she’s never been in one before. That’s only a singular example of how “Darlin’” breaks immersion in the serious side of its fiction by daring to be too tongue-in-cheek.

Speaking as a lapsed Catholic, I’ll add that “Darlin’s” overt condemnation of Catholicism aims to question its potentially problematic placement in social institutions more than it means to lampoon the religion itself. McIntosh handles that satire smoothly enough, even though “Darlin’” knocks at low-hanging fruits like perverted priests and knuckle-rapping nuns. At worst, the scathing swipes are more redundant than they are offensive.

Somewhere amidst the hullaballoo of over-the-top humor and gruesome carnage exists metaphoric material that damns established structure as supposedly superior to living a more natural existence. What did God intend? That’s no more answerable of a question than, what does “Darlin’” intend?

Perhaps I picked up most of what “Darlin’” tries to put down. Still, I can’t come to a concrete conclusion regarding what effect it had on me, and that cuts to the heart of what doesn’t feel right about the film. I decided to assign a favorable three stars out of five for its status as a ponderous curiosity. Truthfully, I’m not sure I can sort a distinct opinion of “Darlin’” after just one confounding viewing.

Review Score: 60

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