What we have here is basically two movies. For the first two-thirds, it’s a narratively not particularly interesting but absolutely beautifully shot gothic piece about a murderous family of carnival performers traveling iin the 1930s. This film is gorgeous—every frame looks like an excellent cinematographer put thought into it and if it carried on all the way through to the end I would have liked it quite a bit just for that. I mean, it’s seriously beautiful, enough to carry it.
It has some strange stylistic touches, such as carnival freaks in the 1930s who are obviously influenced by having seen Marilyn Manson at some point. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have goths yet them. Nonetheless, it held my interest and stood above the pack just for being so cinematically beautiful to watch. It had a dreamlike quality, but wasn’t pretentious enough to qualify as an arthouse film. It’s almost Tarkovsky-level in how intentional the cinematigraphy is, all the way through. I deeply enjoyed it on that level…
…Until the third act. Suddenly it disappears up its own ass and turns into the pretentiously artsy film it so carefully avoided beinig until then. Suddenly it’s entirely in black and white, what scant plot there was disappears into basically a series of images and vingettes, and it even commits the cardinal sin of straight-up turning into a music video for a few minutes. Finally it ends on an incomprehensible artsy, pretentious note and I was left wondering what the plot even was.
Too bad. Could have unquestioningly said I liked it if it had just remained a slow-moving, but gorgeous-without-becoming-unbearably-pretentious flawed gem. But it didn’t. Still, it has a certain something, but, the last act is so tediouly pretentious it becomes unwatchable. Not recommended, unfortunately.