Deserves it's high critical acclaim(minor spoilers, warning)

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2017)

Something I need to get out of the way first - there are certain people who should stay away from this movie, if they don't want their evening ruined. It also demands a certain mood. Because sometimes, you don't want to think and analyze, sometimes you just want popcorn and a feel-good, black and white whodunit. I know the feeling. And it's impossible to tell on the description which way this one it will play out. It's not that it's a pretentious, wordy, artsy-fartsy snooze fest - but it is heavy, it is dark, and it is a thriller/drama. Be warned. If you liked the first episodes of True Detective, you can go right ahead.
I could start by summarizing all the action that takes place and who the characters are, but this movie is at its heart only about crime-solving and kidnappings on the surface. Behind all of this, it is about evil, and what happens to people's psyche when they become victimized by it. How everyone needs a scapegoat, and how people will judge/punish other people for various forms of perceived evil - swiftly, emotionally, without thinking things through - simply because they have an instinctive need for doing so. And how this traps them in a vicious cycle,(a "maze") of evil, that none of them can find their way out of.
I loved the themes of this movie. There's a lot of Alice in Wonderland-references,(LSD, mazes, rabbits) and the atmosphere is at once heavily realistic, and very surreal. There's a lot of prayers and preaches throughout the movie, especially about how we are all born sinners, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the characters hit by sorrow and despair. But Christianity is not at all the point; in the very beginning, a criminal detective is shown judging other people by the year they are born, simply because he believes in astrology. It follows the same message without tying itself to one religion.
The only innocents are the children,(whom also come in the shape of severely damaged "adults") who understands the metaphorical "maze" - which, to many reviewer's annoyance, is not completely literal - and finds their way out of it, time and time again. The children tries to communicate what they know with the adults several times, but these so-called crime-solvers are too busy finding sinners to actually listen.
I loved the performances,(save for Hugh Jackman, who did not seem to connect with his grieving father-role very well) I loved the music, and I loved how this movie was about the "victims" for once, not the often boring perpetrators. It's atmosphere and mysterious tone was something out of the first episodes of True Detective, and it stayed consistent the entire way.
But because it was so concerned about message, symbolism and character, it sometimes lost the realism in the form of a few plot-holes, and was not always completely realistic regarding the actions of several characters. For example(early spoiler) some detective finds the door to a hidden cellar behind a fridge by obscure coincidence, and it strains the suspension of disbelief. I can forgive most of the other stuff, though, and I'm not quite convinced some parts are as illogical as other people have stated; to me, it was believable for certain characters to become trapped in their own bad decisions, and to lose their way in a misguided attempt to do right.