pentagrammar school

goes to show that you cant build a film on texture alone. Of which, there are so many. hairs and soils and ribbons and porcelains. loamy brown trousers, spilled wine straptops and deadmoss green corduroys left floating on the pond. punched leathers, bedsheet revolution catcalls, mohawks and rollnecks and fruitbowls and beers. But texture alone cant fortify this. Especially with such a protracted runtime that serves nothing more than make the mess of the film lie on the floor of a cave, not a hall.

i couldnt help think how much better this wouldve been as some 90 minute 90s revival slasher with supernatural bents. things under the school, dorms, blood, room mates and dancetrax to possession via some Bush song or something. Instead its a frustratingly smug arthouse film that feels like its allowing a highbrow audience to negotiate horror on its own terms, like the rich people buying poorer people to kill on fucking Purge night. the kind of people who buy premium orange juice and who berate their children for not tidying their treehouses. the people who are gifted with autumnal gardens who never go in them because theyre too busy on business trips or reading reviews by people who go to the cinema in a suit (rather than some trackie wearing bag of shit like me).
this film has fuck all to really say, and its going to say it.

"this isnt vanity, this is art!" the film eventually cries out to the audience.

aye, keep telling yourself that, pal