Agnes

A strange and beautiful tale of sex, religion, and dysfunction at the Carmelite convent of Santa Teresa.

A choppy, muddled mess of a movie that has its own identity crisis of what it wants to be or to show.

For all of its ruffled habits and bleeding eyes, Agnes is far sadder than it is scary (quite, versus not at all), and often sillier than it is sad.

Reece shows an intuitive understanding of when to move the camera, and -- more importantly -- when not to move the camera. It's all very elegantly put together.

Constantly surprises and entertains throughout.

This choppy film has little to say, particularly about cloistered women, despite being named after a possessed sister and dedicating a plotline to an ex-nun.

Reece ambitiously flips the movie into a heart-bending moment that focuses on the life of Mary, the one who needs special care from her superiors.

While the movie tries to be clever with its dramatic shift in tone and completely new direction, it ends up feeling like two different films connected by the barest of threads. Even worse, neither story gets any kind of satisfying ending.

Agnes, for all its quirkiness, is memorable as hell, delivering something truly unique and surprisingly poignant.

Looking past what the film is trying to be and more analyzing what the film ends up being, it is safe to say that the positives of Agnes definitely outweigh the negatives of the feature.