After weeks of build-up, Don’t Worry Darling is finally opening in cinemas today. And to coincide with the much-anticipated release, a key track from the film called With You All the Time, has also dropped.
The three-minute song is sombre and quiet – if it was any other soundtrack, or any other film, the release might go under the radar. But Don’t Worry Darling has been internet gossip-fodder for weeks, and has superstars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, no less, playing the lead characters.
With You All the Time has been performed by the duo, too, though it’s their characters Jack and Alice that have been credited on the track. Pugh is singing, while Styles is on the piano.
The song reportedly runs as a “trigger song” throughout the film – with housewife Alice humming it under her breath.
In an interview with Variety, director Olivia Wilde said: “In prep, Harry called me and said, ‘What’s the trigger song? Like, what’s the melody?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m going to different writers to write it. Do you have anything in mind?’ And he said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ Five minutes later, he sent me a demo from his piano, and it was what ended up in the film.”
Styles then said: “I wanted something that could be both sweet and creepy, entirely dependent on the context. I remember first playing it on the piano, and it had a sort of homemade nursery rhyme feel to it. Applied to the different moments in the film, I think it takes on a couple of different lives — I hope.”
Don’t Worry Darling has been one of the internet’s favourite topics for weeks now – no film has been so mercilessly and minutely tracked.
Who could have predicted that Styles sitting down in a particular way at the premiere could have been the catalyst for hundreds of articles and memes about the singer spitting on co-star Chris Pine? And how did a disagreement between Pugh and Wilde get spun into a Game of Thrones-level stand-off with hundreds, again, pouring fuel onto the fire across the internet?
That wasn’t all, either: Wilde was served divorce pages on stage and Shia LaBeouf, who was set to play the lead, left the production. It’s been hurdle after hurdle for the director.
Speaking on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Wilde said: “The whole experience has sort of changed my way of thinking about the internet and how we choose to interact with it, or not.”
The film’s release today, then, comes as a major moment, with reviews remaining, on theme with the film’s storied history, somewhat mysterious and mixed: NME called the film an “unfairly overshadowed thriller”, giving it four stars while the FT said: “Anyone hoping for the film to be a grand disaster may initially be disappointed,” but then went on to conclude, “the rubbernecks get their car crash eventually”.
“Don’t Worry Darling is so much more than Hollywood gossip fodder,” said The New Yorker, while The Standard said that the film’s limited revelations at its denouement, “seem reductive and more than a little offensive to men and women alike.”
