Not for the normies

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2017)

First off, avoid spoilers like the plague if you want to see this right. The state of bafflement you're in for the first half of the film or so is a major aspect of what makes this unique and enjoyable.
This is not for the "general audience" crowd. This is for the midnight freaks who want weirdness and psychedelia, and want it served up extra edgy and disturbing. This is for metalheads, the hyper-intelligent stoners; this is for Gaspar Noe. If you fail to understand what's happening on screen, you will hate it. You may still end up hating it because you may find Aronofsky's vision profoundly disagreeable, offensive, or even blasphemous. In which case you probably don't fit into the "midnight freaks" category anyway, and hence have already been warned.
This film ultimately works because it avoids certain mistakes that weird films - especially allegories - often make. It's not preachy, it's not inconsistent with its own logic, and it has good pacing and a satisfying conclusion (as much as I love you, I'm looking your way for that last one, Holy Mountain). To say that the acting is first-rate is a gross understatement. And for how baffling it appears to be at first, it requires a laughably small amount of shared cultural knowledge (of the broadest kind!) to "get".
So when I read all these fools complaining about not having understood what's going on and hating it because of that, I just have to shake my head because it's more of a reflection on the capacity of today's average moviegoing audience than it is on the film. Pick up a book sometime, you philistines! If anything, it reinforces Aronofsky's grim vision.
Ten stars, two \m/