As an exploration of grief and toxic relationships this falls flat, all the characters are one note and by the end there's nothing new we didn't already infer from the opening scene. A lot of the art-house flourishes felt self-serving than adding to the story, and there's no reason for this to be over 2 hours long.

That being said, I had fun. Opposite to Hereditary, the latter half was the best part. It felt like Aster had finally let his hair down and was having fun with the material (with this and Jordan Peele's Us, I'll gladly accept more comedic laced horror films). Even despite it's rather meh ending watching things slowly escalate to ludicrous levels was a joy to watch (that flower dancing sequence was a howler). It also helps that I went to see this with a cute date and his contagious laughter broke down my curmudgeon-y film critic defenses.