This is a beautifully shot film with talented actors and a stunning backdrop. The problems come with just about everything else. Had the story been told in a linear fashion is would have bored most people to tears. The use of 'flashbacks' etc made it more interesting, but essentially this is a very simple story that is made over complicated.

My biggest problem was with David. He doesn't actually ever do anything wrong, he's just a bit 'off'. He's described as a monster and insulted by his mother constantly, but he genuinely just seems sad and lost. He craves affection and seems to get that from Amanda until he crosses a line I don't think he really understood. Neither of his parents seem interested in him and he's left to his own devices. Was it the splitting of his soul that caused it or the expectation of what splitting his soul would cause? Corolla was expecting him to be different and so he was? The whole 'Greenhouse' storyline just wasn't needed. It seemed tacked on as a reason for weirdness when really you could just have had David have a head injury. It didn't add to the 'poisoning' at all, that in and of itself was enough to be important. It was hard to feel sympathy when after the horse and child got sick that no one roped off the water, put up signs, called for change or any such thing. Other children are affected by it but no one seems to care, they just let their children be affected. It is a relevant issue as we're constantly being faced with our planet's destruction and no one seems particularly bothered. Chemicals are still dumped, pollution still happens and we all just shake our heads and move on. Is this small town a microcosm of the planet at large? And if that is the point, why bother with the 'Greenhouse' parts? They just felt like they distracted from the main themes and message that the film was trying to get across.

You can tell the negative reviewers were expecting a "horror movie" with "scares." Fever Dream is not a spooky ghost movie. It's a psychological drama with an element of magical realism. The story is very coherent and very clearly explained; it would only be confusing to someone who thinks "supernatural" elements must fit into a well established trope, like a curse or a haunting. The original novella had a more surreal, more disturbing sense of desperation, confusion and sadness that would be difficult to translate to film, and they didn't fully do it justice, but it's still competently made. Bottom line is that the book was better but the bad reviews are still mostly just clueless.

I wouldn't call the movie slow paced or boring, as some of the people here say it is.

Any good movie leaves room for interpretation, and this movie isn't short of it.

From how I saw it and how the scenes played out I'd say: Not everything is meant to make sense, it's a "fever dream".

Amanda was suspicious of Carola stealing her kid, but that never happened. She took the kid back to the old clairvoyant to save her from imminent death by making another "migration".

Maybe she wanted to keep her daughter, but the husband came and took her. She then decided to leave her own family and disappear.

David said he didn't share half with someone else, but when Amanda's husband comes back at the end, he acts exactly like Nina would, getting on the back seat where she always stays and holding the teddybear that she always had.

This made me believe David and Nina are sharing their souls/bodies, but Amanda didn't make it in time to the green house and died.

When David is pulled out of the car, he looks as the car gets farther and farther away but he remains still - as if the invisible thread between them gets tighter and tighter. He looks as if he is abandoned by his father.

If David arrived at the green house during the migration, he was moving. The old lady said only the things that are ready to make this switch should move.

It might be possible that Carola was planning all along to steal her child, but I'd have to give it another watch to notice how things unfolded.

She might be wearing heels so she doesn't get contaminated. Carola might have taken Amanda outdoors so much on purpose.

That is also a possibility, but I didn't pay attention to this so much, since it all seemed innocent and light-hearted.

I hope this sheds some light into what this movie is about and why it isn't bad at all, at least in my opinion.