Style over substance

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2019)

I watched this movie, because it popped up on some "best films of '19" lists.
I appreciate brave film making and daring to be different, but I also appreciate stories, that make some sense. It felt to me that trying to shock the audience was more important, than anything else. There's a long buildup, that leads to nowhere. I found myself laughing at some points, because this film tries ridiculously hard to make people uncomfortable. It might have worked if the characters had some actual depth, or it was done in a more subtle manner.
In the first ten minutes I thought to myself, that this film tries to copy Hereditary (which I liked) in a bad way and later found out, that this is from the same director. It isn't a bad thing to have a distinct style, but in this movie, the theatrical elements outweigh the actual message, whatever that was. Was I supposed to care about any of the characters? Was this supposed to be an atmospheric cult horror? I mean a horror about a cult. If there's a hidden meaning to all this, it was so well hidden, I couldn't find it. Otherwise it was dragged out needlessly long.