Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wander Darkly’ on Hulu, a Rumination on the Afterlife (And All That) Via Sienna Miller

Wander Darkly is now on Hulu for anyone searching for a profound-ish weepie-bummer romantic drama about life, death, parenthood, love, partnership and, I think, navigating exigent purgatorial vistas for psychological substantia amidst traumatic occurrences. Which is another way of saying Sienna Miller plays a woman who’s trying to figure out whether she’s dead or not. As you may assume, that’s not an easy question to answer considering it’s existential as all heck, but maybe there’s some wisdom and Greater Meaning to be culled from this story. Let’s find out.

WANDER DARKLY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Adrienne (Miller) has a brand-new baby daughter with Matteo (Diego Luna). They’re not married, so he’s not her husband, but he’s more than just a boyfriend, and baby-daddy makes it sound like they don’t live together, and “partner” is too formal so what should we call him? I don’t have a good answer for that, but it feels relevant considering the movie addresses the nature of their commitment. Anyway, now the baby’s a few months old, and it’s date night. Matteo kind of forgot about it, but he makes a halfway-OK recovery. They leave the baby with Adrienne’s mother Patty (Beth Grant), who neither of them, Matteo especially, particularly likes because she’s very religious-judgy. But it’s a free babysitter so they can bicker on the way to a party where their domestic non-bliss plays out a little bit in her giving a bit of attention to another man and they continue to argue a bit on the way home until WHAM, another car slams into them.

From here, not much makes much sense. We stick to Adrienne’s point of view as she sports a fresh laceration on her forehead and sees herself in the morgue and attends her own funeral. Her baby is a baby in Patty’s care and then a moment later she’s a teenager. There’s little logic to the way Adrienne navigates space-time. She wanders through her house and turns around and suddenly is on the street. She looks at a digital clock and sees quadruple-eights. Time no longer functions. She stands on an overpass and seems to be contemplating jumping off when Matteo shows up to stop her. “What is this, like purgatory?” she asks, and he doesn’t have much of an answer, but he also seems to be less confused about the state of this reality, because he makes a comment about her having a head injury. Should we notice that he also has a laceration on his brow? Probably. What about the tattoo of the Fibonacci sequence on his wrist? Should we notice that too? I dunno, how nerdy do you want to get here?

Adrienne re-lives various memories while jumping around in a fractured narrative: How she and Matteo met, how the baby’s birth was difficult, how they had a magical moment watching dolphins in the sea off the Mexican coast, how they knocked over a candle the first time they had sex and nearly burnt the house down. They argue about marriage, being parents; there’s questions about infidelity. So what’s happening? Are they dead? Comatose? Lost souls? Is there still love between them? Why does that guy in the hood look like Death himself watching them as they celebrate Dia de los Muertos? I BANISH SPOILERS TO THE NETHER REALMS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The post-car-wreck supernatural stuff feather-tickles the same cockles stimulated by stuff like Charlie St. Cloud and Age of Adaline. The surrealist stuff mixed with the sour-relationship stuff is like a more-boring Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Day of the Dead stuff will forever be dominated by the loveliness that is Pixar’s Coco.

Performance Worth Watching: Is it me, or Sienna Miller underrated? She’s often been the best thing about mediocre movies. Anyway, she gives her all here, never allowing the movie to get too melodramatic, and striking truthful and earnest notes as a woman contending with grief, trauma and wild uncertainty.

Memorable Dialogue: Adrienne, who might be dead, or might not be, we can’t be sure, lays on the couch watching Night of the Living Dead when Matteo, who might be dead, or might not be, we can’t be sure, walks in the room:

Matteo: “Zombies? You hate zombies.”

Adrienne: “They’re my people now.”

Sex and Skin: The first-time-they-had-sex-and-nearly-burned-the-house-down scene features some lady nudeness in dim lighting.

Our Take: The actors are good, the direction is creative and the premise is ambitious. It’s a competent, thoughtful, sincere, well-intentioned exploration of Life and Everything In It (And Maybe Beyond It). It compellingly blends things that happened and things that didn’t happen and things that might happen still (or might just be dreams) whirl together in a story about the confused and fractured nature of memory.

But it’s hard to get too excited about Wander Darkly. It’s a tad maudlin and heavy as it mucks about in a waist-deep swamp of mortality, making us wonder if poor Sienna Miller will grasp a beefy fern and haul herself out or be sucked beneath the sludge, so to speak. She and Luna kindle a little chemical urgency in their characters’ ruminations on the ups and downs of long-term committed relationships, which is a pretentious way of saying they look cute together when they’re happy and less cute when they’re arguing. Writer/director Tara Miele keeps us guessing about the nature of the reality she’s creating for Adrienne, throwing in red herrings and little hints and tangential philosophical nudges (Fibonacci sequence! Pineapple! Etc.!) to make it interesting. And it’s interesting enough despite the been-there-done-that feeling of it all, and its disappointingly rote final moments. It’s a decent movie, just not one that’s going to exist outside the middle of the pack.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wander Darkly is thoroughly Just Fine. Nothing new to see here, but don’t just move along, move along, because this good, solid Sienna Miller performance is just enough to recommend it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Wander Darkly on Hulu