Hmmm.

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2019)

I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about this movie.
It's beautiful; no doubt about it.
Some of the acting is heavy-handed, some of the practical effects are a little shoddy (the third hammer to the head and that one wheelbarrow body looked a little cheesy)
HOWEVER, the subtle background effect during the hallucinatory scenes (and possibly every scene? I need to rewatch it...) is borderline perfect. The trick is to not focus on the actor(s), but the background. It's literally trippy.
I love the theme of shared energy and/or the collective consciousness. The entire group caterwauling with the protagonist, conveying the emotions of an individual
made perfect sense in a very unsettling way.
The Wicker Man did most of this stuff better.
The WTF elements are definitely an amplified version, throughout, but it still has that "been done before" vibe.
It's like combining The Wicker Man and The Shining and adding some relatively intriguing variations and some decent effects.
It's not 100% original in content, but the execution is superb. Well shot,
(relatively) well acted (there are some moments that I didn't buy),
well choreographed,
dreadful,
hard to watch;
It runs the gamut, but, again, it's been done before... and better. I'm sorry.
I am not discrediting the artistry of Ari Aster; he definitely knows what he wants to do, but I don't think he knows quite how to make it 100% unique.
People can say what they want about Darren Aronofski, but that dude has been firing on all cylinders since jump street (Pi). Ari Aster is definitely someone to watch, but I think he needs to establish a better voice for himself. It's one thing to pay homage to a sub genre, but it's quite another to reinvent it, and that's where this movie fails for me:dancing the fine line between homage and ripoff.
It's a solid movie.
A second viewing is necessary.