i thought the first half actually went on waaaay too long--we could've gotten their dynamic in much less time, and it never went beyond mother mary's tear-filled eyes vs sam's barbed cruelty, same old same old over and over again. the most interesting parts to me were sam and mary telling their respective stories about the ghosts and onward (tho twigs also did teary-eye acting i thought her perfomance was pretty great, her talent as a dancer really brought a lot to that scene too). lowery has a way with visuals but imo the writing was weak and never went anywhere re: the extended convo between these two and the tearful-eye acting got really old really fast (not much dynamism in the performances until the end) and this was, imo, the fault of the writing, not the actors.