We might as well get the biggest elephant in the room here out of the way... this movie is NOT horror. There is nothing or unsettling about it, if you found the plot thread of the main character's 'friend" wanting him to go off to the TV world dimension scary, then you need to get your diapers changed and go back to watching Nick at Nite. There are those of you who also just want to support the movie because it's almost completely shot in bi-lighting, and that is great, but when it comes to what actually makes a movie worthwhile, key elements like acting and storytelling, it falls pretty flat with the acting being the worst offender here. I had a feeling they were trying to make the main character on the spectrum and that fell flat, aside from his uncertainty with social cues.
At the end of the day you never had a stake in the game they were boring perpetual adolescents who I could have cared less if anything happened to them, thus eliminating any tension that could have developed, if the story went anywhere, which it did not so we do not have to worry about that. Here is where the chorus of Why can't you just let people enjoy things comes in whenever people shatter the social bubble of what the narrative is supposed to be and excuse shoddy art. It is not gatekeeping horror by saying this is not horror, no more than it would be to complain at the fact someone put a box of Capt Crunch Cereal where the box of croutons is supposed to be at the grocery, they are both edible, but one you pour milk on and eat for breakfast, the other you put on a salad. In fact, it's just good marketing as this film might have had a bigger box office if it was marketed as an art house teen drama because people who do not like horror movies might go see this and like it since it is not a horror movie. Simple business.
Genres and labels exist to help the audience find the art. This art works better in theory than execution. I guess if you are super high out of your mind you might like it, and it has a solid message in questioning the nature of reality, they do not go as far as saying it's a simulation but introduces those concepts, not scary concepts they just are thoughts worth exploring. Directors like David Lynch and David Cronenberg explore this kind of surreal filmmaking but done with more depth and better execution, compared to those guys this is trash. It's also an hour and a half of my life I wish I invested differently, there are actual horror movies I could have been watching with that wasted time. The only worthwhile part was when King Woman was on stage.
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