I agree with the WaPo's Ann Hornaday: McDonagh just doesn't do it for me
Both with "Two Billboards" and now this one, I was left wondering what Academy voters and fawning critics saw--because it certainly didn't match my experience. So I liked what Hornaday wrote in her review of "Banshees":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/01/the-banshees-of-inisherin-movie-review/
"For some, McDonagh’s soaring vernacular and tightrope balance of cruelty and humanism embody the finest values of the Irish literary tradition. Others (present company included) find the verbal pyrotechnics clever distractions from a facile, supremely ungenerous moral imagination. Put simply, some of us aren’t buying it."
Yup, just not buying it.