When watching Apostle, I get the same feeling as with some other bad movies in recent years. A lot is just right; there are really interesting and good ideas in the material, and most actors are okay, music quite good, and the visuals are great. But the direction and editing of the film just kills it.
I think this is the basic incorrect assumption that moves the director in this case: the audience will totally buy anything that happens if it fits within the stereotypical narrative I signal at the start of the movie. A cultish and isolated community = brave but haunted individualists fight against weak but cynical communitarians that always become too dogmatic for their own good. If the film narrative is kept within those parameters, the audiences will totally buy everything.
But that assumption is wrong. We, the audience, are capable of noticing when characters act out of character (happens a lot here), when people suddenly seem to have dressed up in black sacrifice clothes in seconds, or people change their opinions of each other between two scenes.
Lesson learned: don't adapt everything to a stupid, stereotypical narrative. Instead, adapt the narrative to great ideas and interesting characters. I know it's hard, but that's what they pay you for!
Anyway, I mourn the really interesting idea at the bottom of this train wreck of a film, as well as the great photography.
