I preferred this film when it was called The Nutty Professor and had a nice version of "That Old Black Magic" in the middle.

Honestly, I'm not going to begrudge anyone who admires this for its stylistic excess and bluntness too much even if I feel like it has the subtlety of a brick but this was incredibly repetitive and has only just enough material for a Black Mirror episode except stretched over an astonishingly ill-judged 140 minutes populated by cartoon characters and saturated with enough interludes where the film didactically explained its one theme once again that it really ended up revealing its own shallowness. I really took issue with how hateful this film got to be, particularly in its "We have Brian Yuzna's Society at home" third act that had about six different points where I thought it was going to end only to pile on the needless freakshow gawping and gore. I feel like this might be my personal lines coming into play but if I'm going to watch something this cruel I need to have some element of empathy or transcendence in the mix or it just becomes pointlessly edgy and mean-spirited - Haneke's La Pianiste is the perfect example of a film I think of as quite unflinching in its portrayal of its protagonist while still managing to stay within the bounds of some relatability and if I've sometimes criticised Lars von Trier for provocation without good sense even he has a better judgement of when to exercise some restraint than this film did.

It wasn't boring which I suppose is impressive considering just how long it is for a horror film but this did not work for me on any level, almost impressive in how much it embodies everything I don't want in a film. I'm glad you're all having such a blast with it though, even if I'll be sticking to Cronenberg in future.