Alice, Darling

There is a specific, jagged kind of tension that exists in the silence between two people who are supposed to love each other. It’s a vibration I felt in my teeth while watching Anna Kendrick—usually the queen of the fast-talking, pitch-perfect quip—spend the first twenty minutes of Alice, Darling literally shrinking into herself. She’s not just acting; she’s evaporating. I watched this on a Tuesday afternoon while my neighbor was power-washing his driveway, and the relentless, distant drone of his machine felt like a weirdly appropriate metronome for the escalating panic happening on my screen.

The Horror of the Modern Notification

While the marketing for Alice, Darling occasionally flirts with the "thriller" label, don’t go in expecting a cabin-in-the-woods slasher. The "villain," Simon (Charlie Carrick), spends most of the movie as a haunting presence on a smartphone screen. In our current era of digital tethering, director Mary Nighy (yes, daughter of the legendary Bill Nighy) understands that a vibrating phone can be more terrifying than a jump-scare.

We see Alice at a celebratory dinner with her best friends, Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku), and she is physically present but emotionally a thousand miles away, performing a frantic mental inventory of what she’s "allowed" to eat and how long she’s "allowed" to stay. Charlie Carrick plays Simon not as a mustache-twirling brute, but as a polished, "sensitive" artist whose cruelty is wrapped in the language of concern. It’s a terrifyingly contemporary portrait of coercive control—the kind that doesn't leave bruises you can see, but makes you rip your own hair out in a bathroom stall just to feel a different kind of pain.

A Performance of Erasure

This is, hands down, the best work of Anna Kendrick’s career. We’ve seen her be the underdog in Up in the Air and the comedic anchor in Pitch Perfect, but here she explores a hollowed-out vulnerability that feels painfully real. It turns out there’s a deeply personal reason for that: Kendrick has been vocal in interviews about the fact that she had just ended a relationship involving emotional abuse right before the script landed in her lap. She wasn't just playing a character; she was processing a ghost.

The movie really finds its legs when the trio heads to a remote cottage for a birthday getaway. It’s here that the "intervention" happens, though it’s less of a formal sit-down and more of a slow-motion collision. Wunmi Mosaku (who was so brilliant in His House) and Kaniehtiio Horn provide the perfect counterweights to Alice’s fragility. They represent the "before" versions of Alice—women who still have their voices, their appetites, and their boundaries. Their frustration with Alice’s lies—the way she protects her abuser like a sacred secret—is uncomfortable to watch because it’s so honest. It’s easy to say "just leave him" from the outside; it’s much harder when you’ve been convinced that your own shadow is an act of betrayal.

The Art of the Indie Pressure Cooker

Produced by Babe Nation Films and Elevation Pictures, Alice, Darling is a masterclass in how to make a $4 million budget feel like a sprawling psychological epic. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and navigated that tricky post-pandemic theatrical landscape where adult dramas often get buried by the latest superhero CGI-fest. Because it didn't have a hundred-million-dollar marketing spend, it relies entirely on the strength of Alanna Francis’s screenplay and the claustrophobic cinematography of Mike McLaughlin.

The film uses the Ontario landscape—all murky lake water and dense woods—as a mirror for Alice’s internal state. There’s a subplot involving a missing local girl that some critics found distracting, but I think it serves a vital purpose. It’s a reminder that while Alice is trapped in a domestic cage, the world is full of threats that are both literal and metaphorical. It adds a layer of "lifestyle horror" that keeps the pacing tight, ensuring the 90-minute runtime never overstays its welcome. In an age of three-hour "content" dumps on streaming services, Alice, Darling knows exactly when to twist the knife and when to let go.

Ultimately, Alice, Darling is a film that demands you look at the things we usually try to ignore. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a necessary one, especially in a cultural moment where we are finally learning the vocabulary for psychological warfare. It’s a movie about the grueling, non-linear process of finding your own pulse again after someone else has spent years trying to stop it. If you’ve ever felt the blood drain from your face at the sight of a specific name on your lock screen, this movie will see you.

It’s a quiet triumph of contemporary indie cinema that proves the most high-stakes battles are often fought in the silence of a vacation rental. Kendrick is a revelation, the supporting cast is impeccable, and the ending—while not a "happy" one in the traditional sense—feels earned, breathing a sigh of relief that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. Just maybe keep your phone on "Do Not Disturb" while you watch it.