Sterile.

Rating: 4/10 (25 January 2020)

As wonder woman once told me: "if you ever see anything you can't quite explain, a cult did it".
I can admit when I first reviewed this I was a bit over emotional but now that I have had some time to compose myself I want to that I can believe this movie really did come from a good place creatively. They tried to not be just another conveyor belt horror. It was a story, not only of material conflict and external menaces but also of interpersonal problems, to really show there is a lot to be feared in people's humanness as well as the apparently inhuman.
But Although it looks the part of a classy, original piece of dark fiction it fails on a few levels, I think because it is in denial about the type of movie it should be. If it had focused on being a dark paranormal family drama I think it would have so much more to give, but wrangling it into the horror genre just warped it into something it's not. As much as I would love to see an effective, character driven horror, this was never meant to be it. One feels that a ton of moments were just shoved in just for the creep factor and it just makes the tone risible rather than creepy.
You will understand the conclusion of this movie, it's not esoteric. This movie is that unhappy medium between being way too slow and way too convoluted; far too upfront and far too confusing. By the end I am painfully aware of the situation but still scratching my head on small details and not in the fun way. A good horror is mysterious sure, but mysterious is the skilful presentation of information that makes me believe there is an answer waiting to be found, to be confusing you only need to bombard me with weirdness for the sake of weirdness which when you think about it is not really being weird at all.
I think it wants to be Donnie Darko or something but it didn't actually have a story to tell. Or if it did, I understood it, but I didn't feel it if that makes sense. The dots just don't connect, it doesn't feel like its many creep out moments were developed from a core idea but the other way around. It's like a blank template to just ornament with as many spooky little flourishes as the writer could brain storm.
Story-wise it doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. It doesn't really seem to move except in infrequent jumps. The story doesn't develop outside of key moments, it just sort of ruminates. I like a slow burn, but this didn't even crackle, it just throws a bunch of gasoline on itself once in a while. It has its moments sure but what do I do with the flaccid quarters of an hour?
It is very heavy handed. Most obviously in the music. The handling of music is HORRIBLE! I cannot stress how incompetent the music direction on this is. It's as bad as "Get out" and "The Hole in the Ground" combined. The music itself is fine, put that on a CD and it can be fun to listen to as Dark Ambient, but it just kills any atmosphere this movie might have had.
And that's before we get to the soapy dialogue: this so does not earn the screaming matches it thinks are emotional nor does it justify deeply unsympathetic mother character who is overacted at nearly every turn. Toni Collette shows the subtlety and restraint of Pennywise in being the most excruciatingly pugnacious and hysterical as she can be. But I suppose even a good actor can only do so much with this kind of script that thinks Eastenders is the height of drama. I would so check out another movie she's in just to see if it really is just the script.
For all the ways it tries to be a nuanced and complex piece of storytelling there is just something so annoying, so risible, so *arrogant* in its pretence of being an "arty", new age kind of horror when it is really just another generic horror that took a few more of all the wrong risks ultimately showing its colors as more style than substance.
Here's a few things they threw in just because:

They begin with text on black screen. Never a good sign.
The camera rotates 90 degrees on two characters. It is very artificial.
A character sees something in a reflection that isn't an accurate reflection of the thing.
Upside-down tracking shot.
Dream fake out.

It handles its uncanniness poorly. It doesn't establish the parameters that allow for this early on. It doesn't allow us to consider any ambiguity on whether they supernatural or just mental illness.
I know a lot of people will say "I guess some people would like a gorefest with no subtlety". I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad for liking this movie, no one wants to see a well made, subtle, horror/dark movie more than me. I'm not saying I have refined tastes, it just sounds fun. But one has to remember that being confusing is not the same thing as being meaningful, being convoluted is not the same thing as being nuanced and putting style over substance does not immediately elevate you above all the other cookie cutter examples of your genre.
I once thought that anything that tried to be unique had to be worth seeing. I'm not saying you shouldn't see this, even if just so you can talk about with your friends because is indeed unique. I will say in its defence that with SO MANY conveyor belt horrors out there that really do not deserve to be bared with past the first 10 minutes, at least this is audacious and singular enough to be watchable for its 2 hour runtime. I do not force myself through movies, if I don't feel gripped I give up and I saw this in one sitting.