Mickey Keating’s superb new thriller, Darling, is making some serious noise during its first week of release.
Now on VOD and in limited theaters, critics are raving about Keating’s psychological horror story that stars up-and-coming genre titan Lauren Ashley Carter (Pod, Jug Face, The Mind’s Eye), as well as Brian Morvant, Sean Young, Larry Fessenden, John Speredakos, and V/H/S fav Helen Rogers.
Trace reviewed the film, calling Darling a hypnotic, trippy ride, while Luiz raves, explaining that it mesmerizes with minimalist filmmaking.
We are huge fans of this little indie gem and reached out to Keating to talk about the film’s influences.
“My new film ‘Darling’ is out in theaters and available on VOD this week and so I decided to celebrate the only way I know how – by talking about a bunch of movies that I adore,” Keating tells us. ” ‘Darling’ is a love letter to surreal, strange, often nightmarish films that bury themselves deep into your mind and make your skin crawl. Here’s a list of films I love that do just that. Enjoy!”
- That Cold Day In The Park – Robert Altman made this film quite early in his career and it so brilliantly captures the quiet descent of a very troubled protagonist. Sandy Dennis is perfectly unsettling from frame one and it makes her increasingly violent obsessions all the more terrifying.
- Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy (Repulsion, The Tenant, and Rosemary’s Baby) – Three masterworks of crushing paranoia, internalized claustrophobia, and the nightmare world of a fractured mind.
- Barton Fink – I included this next because it’s a clear love letter to the “Apartment Trilogy,” specifically The Tenant. Barton Fink is another film that throws the audience into the head of a truly untrustworthy narrator and forces them to watch as the world literally goes to hell.
- The Innocents – What more do I need to say about this movie that hasn’t already been said thousands of times? It’s bliss.
- Diabolique – A perfect combination of crime and madness. I’d argue that the bathtub scene in this film is the best in horror history. This is a perfectly creeping, atmospheric trip, with beautiful black and white images and a terrorized girl in a white nightgown. What’s not to love?
- Eraserhead – The perfect nightmare. It seems ridiculous to even mention it on this list because every filmmaker owes some sort of creative debt to Eraserhead, I’m sure. But still, I just can’t resist. It’s perfect in every single way. Shot in LA, it feels like another world. It’s a beautiful hallucination.
- Tetsuo, The Iron Man – Another upsetting, surreal, nightmare. You can feel it burning itself into your brain as you watch. There are absolutely no rules to the way it’s told and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
- Images – Another Altman head trip that takes a step even further into the surreal. The soundtrack was created by John Williams and Stomu Yamashta and served as the primary inspiration for the score in Darling. This film is totally intoxicating.
- Surface Tension – This 1968 experimental short by Hollis Frampton was a huge inspiration for Darling. From the flashing text, to the rhythmic phone ringing, and jarring view of New York City. Frampton’s work is astounding and a standout example of film as an individual art form.
- Persona – Perfection.
