I don’t think Olivia Wilde is a terrible director. She has an eye for great visuals and Booksmart was amazing. That being said, it’s like she just wildly misunderstood the material she was working with here. The world building here needed to make the town more subtly hellish rather than what was given. I also literally do not understand why she made such a point that only women come in this movie because that’s so… against everything else the movie was saying???

This wasn’t as awful as I was expecting but so much of it was just nonsensical and it’s in-universe rules were not clear at all. How did the plane crash if it’s all just a simulation? I don’t wanna sound all Cinema Sins-y but I just feel like the setup was all just trying to create a weird atmosphere where *something* wasn’t right but it was never confident in what that something was. Like compare this to Get Out - everything in that movie clearly sets up its twist so when it all comes together it’s a “holy shit that’s crazy and I didn’t expect that but it makes everything clearer now” vs DWD where you have to forgive so many inconsistencies.

The positives: Florence Pugh was really really good here, it was nice to look at, and I had a decent time. It’s not great but at least I wasn’t bored!