I think I'd rather help Greta Thunberg pick a prom dress for two and half hours.

Rating: 2/10 (3 April 2020)

I feel very similarly about this movie than I did with Hereditary by the same writer.
I feel this could have been a majestic, compact, efficient 90 minute chiller that was a masterpiece of its genre. But sadly this movie drowns in its own over ambition with way too much thrown at us and the ultimate effect is portentous, messy and inelegant.
The detail in realizing the picture is certainly very impressive: the rich sense of place and local color alone could almost have made this movie worth seeing if it had been 25% shorter. In short, the thing looks fantastic and very professional (until it gets confident but I'll get to that).
Ari Aster is... a lot like David Lynch. By this I mean that he is a film maker that has a marvellous imagination, a rich mind for stories a certain boldness that some people think has gone in horror. But he really, really needs to learn how to self edit. He is surrounded by too many yes-man (and women) for some reason. Like Hereditary, it's hard to verbalize exactly what is wrong with this movie because it takes the form of so many little things that wreck the mood like wrong notes in an otherwise well composed piece of music. Seriously, someone who call tell him "Ari, baby, you're script, she's phenomenal! Just take out this, this, this, this, that and replace this with something less convoluted and we've got gold!".
The first 20 minutes alone gave me so much to chew on: the way that tetraptych flies open like it's a preschooler's show, the way they cut away from the intense Nordic Winter with that phone ringing as if it were a comedy. The word "scary" twice! (show don't tell) and then something I've been seeing in more and more horror movies that really gets to me: we begin with a something horrible happening. Which would be fine except it *has nothing to do with the rest of the frickin' movie*. And no, don't try to tell me that it's thematic and part of the character's journey. This movie had 150 minutes to sell this to me and I still don't buy it. Dani Is a bland, one dimensional character with no personality beyond feeling sorry for herself which she has every right to do, given the circumstances, but it makes for tedious cinema. She is not an interesting protagonist. That should have been Chidi. He is the one character who really feels like a character, rather than target practice and the acting probably played a part in that.
Other bizarre cinematic choices like a strange obsession with reflections which might have been atmospheric if they'd spaced them out more but there's two scenes in the first act where someone talks to someone off screen but we see their reflection...if there might have been good if there were some theme of self discovery in this movie, but there really isn't any more than any movie. And another time when they match cut going into one room and into another...it's so obvious they used a trick set it ruins the mood. And when the camera says "screw it" and goes upside down...now I'm a sucker for stylized cinematography but there needs to be a physical justification for it. Maybe a character leaned back and saw the world upside down for a moment...but no...ellipsis, ellipsis, ellipsis....
Another issue is how it seems to be Dani's story and yet we keep pulling away from her. But she annoys me so I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is.
The film is a blur of excessive plot points, obnoxious characterisation and misjudged dialogue. I don't care about Dani. I just don't and she is played irritatingly. The thing I really like about this picture is curiously the thing everyone who likes it hates: the slow atmospheric scenes where you can't resist the sense that some unseen terror is coming. We so don't get enough of that in horror, not now, not in yesteryear. It does feel a lot like rip off of Wicker Man sometimes but that's it's strongest element. And that sinks in all the other stuff...
And the ending...well, I won't spoil it but wowee I have not been ticked off at an ending so much since Knock Knock. I raised my middle finger to the end credits and told movie exactly what I think of it.
in conclusion, some magnificent film making is wasted, even ruined, in a hubristic attempt to make what could have been an admirable horror movie into an exploration of the human condition. An expertly made cake with 3 grams of human excrement is still a bad cake, and that is sort of how I feel about this movie.
I did stick with it for the full 150 minutes to be fair and I'm sure there was fun along the way (best sex scene ever...) but my final emotion was not boredom or frustration but white hot anger. You'll understand why when you see it. Or maybe not...
Fudge this movie. I love that it's trying to be something beyond the cookie cutter teen scream horror but a film needs to do more than look the part.