ArcaMax

"Strange Darling," a spunky new scuzz-thriller by writer-director JT Mollner, sets right out to mess with your head, relating a serial-killer story in six "chapters" that are shuffled around out of order for maximum misdirection. There's nothing especially novel about the movie's time-chopping design, which has lent temporal pizzazz to such well-known films as "Memento" and "Pulp Fiction." But the picture is distinguished by its rich trash-flick cinematography (some of the woodsy exteriors recall alfresco exploitation classics like the 1972 "Last House on the Left"), and it features intensely focused lead performances by Willa Fitzgerald ("Reacher") and Kyle Gallner ("The Passenger"), who lift it a bit above the gory morass of standard slasher entertainment.

Whatever is happening in the story seems clear at first. The movie opens in the midst of a car chase, with Fitzgerald's character (a fatal blonde called "The Lady" in the credits) barreling down a highway in a cherry red auto with Gallner pursuing her in a truck, snorting lines of cocaine off the back of his hand and taking occasional potshots at her with a high-powered rifle. Gallner's character is called "The Demon," so I think we can be forgiven for figuring we know where he's coming from.

But do we? When Lady pulls off the road, hops out and disappears into a forest, Demon is right behind her, tracking his prey to a big old country house. Inside, waving his rifle around in continued hot pursuit, he comes upon a dead body lying in a small lake of blood. Naturally, we have no idea who this is, or was, but a helpful time shift introduces him as Frederick (Ed Begley Jr.), an ancient rural hippie who lives out here with his mate, a woman named Genevieve (Barbara Hershey). When we first lay eyes on him, Frederick is whipping up one of the most disgusting breakfasts in recent cinema history (pancakes and eggs fried in a full quarter pound of butter, with syrup, jam and whipped cream oozing around on top). We're grateful not to have to linger over this garish repast and think that Frederick should be retrospectively thankful not to have lived long enough to digest it.

The plot chronology keeps taking left turns, at one point (but when?) making a pit stop in a car outside a motel, with Lady and Demon, clearly having come to some sort of understanding, smoking and flirting in the neon noir light. (The cinematography is by actor Giovanni Ribisi, who has honed his work in this area with years of commercials and music videos.) Lady is wearing a red wig now and attempting some carnal outreach. "You seem like a nice guy," she tells Demon. "But I have to ask you a question. Are you a serial killer?" As if it really matters what he says, he says, "No."

So who's up to what here? Lady is soon revealed to be carrying: a flick knife, a stun gun, a little stash of ketamine. And Demon is not without surprises of his own. The movie's cheapie B-movie aesthetic drags it down a little -- there are points at which it starts feeling like a noir exercise. But Fitzgerald goes all in on her psycho-babe character, and she and Gallner have a nice, rancid chemistry. The plot switchbacks grow a little less surprising as the picture moves along, but they do keep coming.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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