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# Darling is a stunning psychohorror chamber piece
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/darling-stunning-psychohorror-chamber-piece/
- Published: 2015-09-30T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T17:43:58.000Z
- Description: We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// Mickey Keating’s Darling is a lovingly-crafted Polanski mixtape. If the idea of “Repulsion, but also The Tenant” gets your juices flowing, s
- Author: Astrid Budgor
- Tags: News, black-and-white, Darling, fantastic fest, Horror, nyc, polanski, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

*We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite* films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot tak*es,* [head over here](http://killscreendaily.com/archive/tag/fantastic-fest/?ref=killscreen.com).

///

Mickey Keating’s *Darling* is a lovingly-crafted Polanski mixtape. If the idea of “*Repulsion*, but also *The Tenant*” gets your juices flowing, stop reading here and find a way to watch it.

Indie stalwart Lauren Ashley Carter (*Jug Face*, *The Woman*) gives an incredible performance as a woman (only called “Darling” in the film) beset both by trauma and supernatural assault; she’s withdrawn, awkward, savage, enraged, and terrifying by turns. It’s really her show: other actors pop in and out but Carter dominates the majority of the film.

Darling is the new caretaker of a luxe New York apartment, and slowly finds herself coming under the spell of a mysteriously locked room upstairs. To say any more about the story would literally constitute a full plot synopsis. Keating and company (special mention goes to editor Valerie Krulfeifer) conjure an atmosphere of bleak dread, punctuated by ruthless, liberally-deployed jump scares and made beautiful by luminescent black-and-white cinematography, assaultive sound design, and a sort of addled, hazy jazz score that on several occasions lurches into grindcore.

such confident abandon

This is the type of movie—tone-heavy, stylish, minimal—that is really, really difficult to get right. *Darling* knows that. That’s why it’s a cool 78 minutes. There’s not enough time for its tricks to wear thin. It doesn’t go anywhere unexpected, and in fact takes a few turns that irked me in other recent horror movies: but it executes with such white-knuckle style, such confident abandon, that it’s mesmerizing. Everyone involved in this thing gives it their fucking all, and the result is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, festival or no festival.