Not a horror film. Not an allegory. A straightforward retelling

Rating: 9/10 (15 May 2019)

I came to this film with no great expectation and a vague memory that it was not actually a horror film. The opening scenes were psychologically and visually intriguing enough and the arrival of the 'Rosemary's Baby' elements with Harris and Pfeiffer was duly unsettling but when for me the big reveal happened with the Cain and Abel fight it suddenly lost the feel of pretentiousness and showed itself to be very clear that it was not trying to be some oblique allegory but a head-on modern dress translation of the Biblical story basing around the 'vain and callous' Old Testament deity that many cannot help but read into the texts but is almost never given a rounded portrayal.
There is no 'allegory' it is quite literal. Same as Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo and Juliet' is not an allegory for Shakespeare's. I understand that this was marketed as a horror film but it is no such thing. Neither is it 'trippy and surreal'. It is just a high concept exploration of the Creation story but with a Gaia figure as his first unnurtured creation. I cannot see this as a politically eco-movie as everything that happens is shown to be cyclical and inevitible in a nod to current cosmology.
I can only say that it carried me along willingly to it's entirely predictible and satisfying end. It did so elegantly and with a sure-handed momentum that ratcheted up the pace and the emotional resonances and never gave me time to notice flaws and hit no wrong notes for me. I am a little unsure of Javier Bardem as cast but Jennifer Lawrence it is impossible for me to imagine another actress carrying her role so affectingly.
A minus point for me was that Harris and Pfeiffer DID carry the resonance of Rosemary's Baby into the movie and this feels like an accident that should have been avoided. Their age seems to be more to reflect the strange biblical scholarship that has Adam living for a thousand years rather than to be in itself creepy. They did the OPPOSITE of the Polanski characters in completely ignoring the nubile young wife and the association should not have been allowed to be drawn and mislead viewers into thinking the film was something it was not.
The psychological horror elements were otherwise well marshalled and properly disquieting. The criticism that it leans heavily on Bunuel's 'The Exterminating Angel' rings true but it would be more of a criticism if it were the 1000th film to do so.
I am completely at a loss to understand how anybody can look for signs of the Jennifer Lawrence character having a mental breakdown or drug induced hallucination. It is not that film. It is simpler and far more satisfying than that. I understand why horror fans are disappointed and Christians hostile but it seems to me to be the first cogent exploration on film of how the Old Testament deity is not 'fit for purpose' in the modern world and as a film it needs to be absorbed and engaged with.