What genre of movie was this?

I just watched this on Neflix. I'm not sure if I watched a funny horror movie, or a horrible comedy.

Some people here are probably old enough to remember the comedy characters of Latka (Andy Kaufman) from Taxi or Balki (Bronson Pinchot) from Perfect Strangers. The running gag in both instances was that these foreigners spoke with vaguely eastern European accents, and would periodically describe some incomprehensible custom from their homeland.

That's all I could think of as I watched this critical darling that was promoted as a horror movie.

It's a common plot. Tourists -- or students in this case -- arrive at some exotic or out-of-the-way destination only to get slowly caught up in the bizarre and deadly rituals of the locals.

The commune in this movie struck me as ludicrous. We don't see them doing the things that you would think needed doing in their no-tech society... farming, tending to livestock, churning butter, breaking out the washboards... Instead they spend their days indulging in these drawn out complex and super-specific rituals.

All I could think of was, "Where do they find the time to do this amazing embroidery on their clothes? And how do they get their clothes so gosh darn white without washing machines, modern bleach and all the rest? What do they use as fertilizer to grow these HDR brilliant flowers?"

Some of their over-the-top rituals included the "death-by-Bingo" contraption. Another was the 'Sacred Hammer of Skull Crushing'... something you'd expect to see in a Monty Python movie. (Sidebar: A piece of wood that big would require a lot more effort to heft about than we see on screen.)

And speaking of Monty Python, the bit where we see a human leg randomly sticking straight out of a flower bed was ripe for a whole comedy routine along the lines of the surreal dead parrot skit. What was the point of burying a body so carefully so as to have this perfectly upright limb sticking out of the ground? Why not both legs? Why not an arm or two? Was it meant to be a tree stake? Something for the gardener to sit on while tending the flowers?

At the end when we see Florence Pugh struggling to walk with her heavy dress of ridiculously bright flowers like a beached elephant seal I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of it all.

To be sure there were some moments of "well that's just gross". We see one suspended victim still breathing through his extracted lungs. What possible religious purpose or meaning would this have for these people? It seemed more like one of those Rube Goldberg death traps out of Saw.

At the end, the randomly chosen victims are given an extract of yew tree so that they won't feel the pain of burning alive. We come to see that it's a ruse as their screams of agony are heard across the field by the women. But how did this ritual evolve if everyone knows it's bogus to start with? I'd almost describe this as a plot hole.

And speaking of which... that sympathy wailing by the women came across as bizarre too. It reminded me of the plank scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In any case, I didn't find it funny enough to be outright comedy, nor scary enough to be straight up horror. I personally wouldn't recommend this to anyone.