I love Alejandro Jodorowsky, the person, who is charismatic and funny and interesting. But, man, he must have been smoking some righteous substances when he made this amateurish and borderline incoherent mess. After looking at the glowing reviews, I feel compelled to exclaim that the emperor has no clothes here. In a way, I get why the adulation. Jodorowsky is a seriously cool guy, and it is commendable whenever a filmmaker goes out on a limb to make something with zero mainstream appeal. He is probably a genius, based on the quality of his comics more so than his movies. But come on. Bad is bad. I never for a single moment forgot that I was watching a movie during this. The histrionic acting was laughable. I did not care about a single character. The symbolism was obvious and clunky. The special effects were cartoonish. I became increasingly bored and had to pause the film twice just to get up the energy to finish it. I did like one scene - the piano scene - which was genuinely impressive. His son apparently can act when given the right material. But the rest of it was insufferably dumb.
Review of Santa Sangre
