Mickey Keating’s (Pod, Carnage Park, Ritual) Darling is a mesmerizing, black and white fever-dream of suspense, trailing star Lauren Ashley Carter down a staircase of insanity and brutality. The titular character takes a position as caretaker of a history-plagued mansion in the city, thus initiating her plunge into madness. Lauren Ashley Carter is searing as Darling; she is an awkward catastrophe of nerves, and her doe-eyed ferocity is profoundly disquieting. Scalpel-sharp editing and phenomenally lonesome panoramas sink the viewer into Keating’s alternate New York. Darling walks in the gardens of Hitchcock, Lynch, and Lovecraft, but thoroughly remains Keating’s own opus to the broken mind.
See Darling, Directed by Mickey Keating and starring Lauren Ashley Carter, in theaters April 1, 2016.
