This movie is a mess. A Good mess. But a mess.

Let me firstly say that this film is fantastic in several aspects. The performances (all two of them) are spellbinding and worth all of the praise and more. The cinematography is among the best I've seen in recent years. Every shot in this film is absolutely breathtaking. The sound design and musical score enhance the atmosphere even moreso.

However,

I just think the script and editing make no sense. It feels as if the scenes are played on shuffle, and not in a good way like Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros, or Rashomon. Characters go from friends to at odds to enemies back to friends to enemies to at odds to friends, all over again. The film should have some sort of gradual buildup to a greater mystery, which it's clearly trying to do, yet it just flipflops from scene to scene without much relation or meaning. Everytime something suspenseful or progressive happens, the movie just shoots itself in the foot and forgets that the scene just happened. There is no passage of time, no pacing, no real grasp on how the events have transpired. I understand that this is an arthouse film, but cryptic arthouse films are still understandable. Even Robert Eggers's previous film, The Witch, has cryptic storytelling but is still easy to follow and is still quite excellent!

I think the movie could certainly benefit from a re-editing. I feel as if all of the scene are there, but they're out of order. It's a shame because I really want to adore this film like everyone else. I own it Blu-Ray and have seen it dozens of times. I've been hoping it would click one of these days, but instead my reasonings for disliking it only become more vivid. It's a great movie to watch on shrooms or on mute.

My ONLY guess is that the story IS told out of order, but nobody has seemed to realize it yet? Not sure if I buy that but it could make sense.