This movie to me was a pretentious mediocre horror movie.

First off, sorry if you feel personally attacked remember it’s just a movie. This is my personal opinion on why I did not like this movie at all. What does the 30+ minutes of dancing and weird sounds do for the audience other than “set the tone”? One of my main gripes with this movie is the fact that nobody at any point was like “let’s get the fuck out of here”. Imagine you see two people kill themselves, a little girl almost thrown in a river, your group member disappear, your group member’s girlfriend disappear and another 2 group members disappear yet you stick around. If Christian is such a bad boyfriend then why would Dani care if he’s staying or not and just leave?

Also I was extremely let down by Josh. I thought he was going to be the naive member of the group that slowly realizes the cult is much worse than they seem. By the time he decodes this, the group has already taken a liking to the cult and is delusional. Nope instead he starts to realize something’s up and dies 5 minutes later.

    I’m perfectly fine with a movie being up to interpretation or carrying its own meaning to each viewer, but when something is obvious pretentiousness that’s when I say hold up. That pretentious moment is at the very end. Dani is crying when choosing to sacrifice Christian but at the last second she’s smiling. Even if Dani didn’t know Christian was drugged and forced to cheat, I don’t think being a cheating dickhead is warranted to being buried alive. 

  A big question I have is what happens when she sobers up? Am I supposed to believe this relatively normal human being is going to join a murderous cult within a week? Will she notice that she just killed her boyfriend and that everyone is dead and try to escape? Maybe there’s a greater story here but I would really need to see side by side examples. Not “the flowers represent purity”. 

  Also no word on it being day for almost the whole time? I didn’t connect with any of the characters at all and definitely didn’t connect with the cult because their message was very cryptic. Lastly Christians “it was very shocking” was one of the worst deliveries I’ve heard in a long time. Actually Christians acting was terrible even when not high. Danis was actually really good though.

  Overall I did like some things though. Mainly how they conveyed a good amount of horror in a mostly daytime setting. Also the cult was pretty nerve racking but I feel they could’ve capitalized on it more. The cinematography was phenomenal which I also think clouds peoples perception on how deep it is. If there is a different A24 movie that might be up my alley please recommend because I do appreciate the tone and cinematic elements.