Drug-shaming conservative garbage.

Rating: 2/10 (16 March 2019)

This movie is ridiculously stupid and pretentious. The good reviews are baffling.
This is ham-handed poser arthouse cinema.
Marketed as based on a true story -- which is a lie. After some digging you can find an interview where Noe reveals the "real life" incident involved a "much smaller" dance party where drinks were spiked and things "went sour...BUT NOTHING BAD HAPPENED". OH OK! Noe decided to make club goers into drug-crazed raping incestual violent simpletons completely and totally as artistic license. In most interviews he asserts he just took some artistic license to avoid dealing with the real people involved. That is nothing but BS considering "nothing bad happened". This movie is based on Noe hearing about drinks being spiked at some party sometime. With a foundation that vague, it's no wonder the movie comes across like a performer who didn't prepare before they took the stage.
It ranks up there with Reefer Madness in the portrayal of LSD and drugs. If you have ever taken LSD or been around people who are on it, you will be confused. It's absolutely preposterous. They act like they are on some combination of bath salts and PCP.
The characters are terrible and nasty people. The gay characters act with the same toxic masculinity as the straight characters. Just wrong. It's over the top to the point of of ridiculousness. All the characters act like nihilistic young Republicans, carelessly offensive and unashamedly selfish. These are supposed to be professional dancers deep in the club/dance music scene -- it's preposterous. This is nothing like what the dance music world is like.
I was hoping for at least some cool psychedelic scenes to simulate the LSD use, but there's none. Noe turns the camera upside down for the last 10 minutes of the movie. No reason. Ohhhh cooool.
Three times during the movie he blasts boring, asinine, glib phrases onto the screen, like "death is an amazing experience" or "birth is a unique opportunity" -- oh really, Mr Noe? Tell us more you wise, wise man. The birth statement comes across as an anti-abortion message -- it follows characters discussing abortions, unemotionally and unflinchingly, y'know, cus that's how people who have abortions are like. Cold and heartless and open to talk about it with virtual strangers.
Midway thru the movie Mr Noe flashes his own name on the screen repeatedly, each time imitating a classic dance music label logo. It's incredibly egotistical and appropriative.
The movie has a great soundtrack with real quality electronic music, like Dopplereffekt and Aphex Twin. Someone who really understands and loves club culture curated the soundtrack. And the dance scenes before things "go sour" are cool.
Mr Noe however does not understand club culture. He made a movie that is an insult to club culture and comes across as a deeply stereotypical, conservative anti-drug movie. The only way it could halfway fly is if there was some nightmare unbelievable-but-true event that inspired it, but there's not..at all. You have to buy the idea that LSD does this to people and that club culture is just a druggy nightmare filled with hostile and dangerous people, which is how it's almost always presented. Raves=drugs=bad. Give us a break already.
Anybody who thinks this is a good "arty" movie is being taken for a ride.