Good camera work, not so good plot

Rating: 4/10 (21 October 2019)

This contains spoilers! Ten minutes into this movie, I was intrigued. twenty minutes in, I was way ahead of the movie. OK, a traumatized young woman travels with her boyfriend and his friends to a utopian community in Sweden.. Everyone in the community is wearing white and is strangely friendly, but not really helpful. How many horror movies start this way? Sorry, but I don't like movies that a) promote the torture of animals. The bear in the small cage sent a signal to me to turn this off. b) the ritual of killing their elderly by throwing them off a cliff and smashing their heads in, and the comeback line from one of the Americans is, "Well, we put our elderly in group homes." Are you kidding me? Historically, there were actually real people who tried to set up real communities that were compassionate and idealistic. Brook Farm comes to mind, which would make for a much more complex and humane look at people who attempt to live alternate life styles. But this is just pure Hollywood with a touch of sadism. Not for me. Give me a movie that actually tries to grapple with humankind trying to come to terms with the best and the worst in itself. Actually I don't agree with the critiques that condescendingly called this movie "artsy." What's wrong with trying interesting camera work, different pacing, and a more slowly developed plot? To me, that was the interesting part of the movie. But the utopian community as a thinly disguised hell is not new and the torture of animals is just cruel and inhumane. Try a more difficult plot, one that actually refelcts real huan behavror and not decades old Hollywood tropes about cults.