What happens when someone already remade The Wicker Man.

Rating: 4/10 (3 July 2019)

A film this bereft of plot or purpose does not need to be 2 and a half hours long. But Ari Aster is nothing if not pretentious. The unnecessary length of this film is just one example of his boundless ability to indulge himself.
If you've seen the Wicker Man, you've seen this. If you've seen just about any film in this genre, you've seen what this one has to offer (and likely much more). But above all else, it really is trying to just be The Wicker Man. It dutifully follows each expected beat, with no surprises in store. The usual tropes of an "evil village holiday" movie manifest. A troubled relationship, an innocent invitation, folksy people preparing for an upcoming celebration that is obviously the epitome of all evil to everyone but the clueless protagonists. The evil villagers themselves are indistinguishable from those of The Wicker Man's equally pointless 2006 remake. The whole "evil matriarchy!!" theme from that film is imported fully into this one (minus the bees, I guess), proving that Ari Aster believes storytelling is nothing more than a quick cut-and-paste job.
This film is not a trainwreck in the way that some are. It looks like a movie, and sounds something like a movie. On a technical level, it is mostly fine. But it's insufferable all the same. Because it fails on a creative level. Everything done here has been done to death already and done better. It is a hollow exercise in remixing other people's' work, with no update or insight to justify its existence. The perfect horror film for the time, I suppose. But not one worth actually sitting through.