You can almost smell the dust and sweat. For a while this plays like a desert road movie with a rave heartbeat — all thump, glare, and decisions made at 3am. Sirât has the kind of opening that properly promises trouble in the best way.
The vibe is Noé’s sensory assault filtered through Östlund’s deadpan cruelty, all the while being egged on by Guy Maddin. Postcards land from Zabriskie Point, gears grind from Wages of Fear, and dust flies in the wake of Mad Max’s chassis. Then it swerves. A sudden, ugly escalation lands, and the story can’t quite absorb the shock; scenes start feeling less like choices and more like evasions.
Sergei López does what he can to anchor the chaos, and I’ll grant the film its nerve. But the final stretch reaches for “mind-blowing” but mostly just blows the film apart. Bold, yes. Coherent, no.