Ines (Alicia Vikander) tags along with her sister Emilie (Eva Green) to go to some woodland retreat near the Alps. Fortunately for them, it’s summer. But the guy running the retreat, Aron (Adrian Lester), is asking for their passports. That’s a red flag. Also, Emilie brought along with her notes from her doctor and lawyer as well as a proof of payment. The last thing in necessary in something this swanky but classy, but what are the other notes for?

Turns out that this retreat is for terminally ill people. Emilie has an illness that she can’t recover from, and she prefers to spend her last days in the Alps. That’s Euphoria‘s main premise, and the latent purpose for this movie’s existence is for Ines to figure out the meaning of life and death through other patients. Charles Dance, plays one of these patients, giving her a verbal smack down when she calls out how pathetic these patients are.

This movie has potential to be good and has genre Easter eggs, ranging from dread horror to something more mystical. It eventually withdraws from that promise to make certain moments profound. Most of these moments consists on either the patients or the staff trying to make Ines see their side of the death debate. One scene has her dancing with Emilie’s personal companion (Charlotte Rampling) to a David Bowie song. It’s trying for some catharsis but it unfortunately doesn’t work out.

If anything, the longer the movie goes, the more holes it presents on its premise. It shows Ines and Emilie as opposites. Ines has lived a full life and the sexual components of it. Meanwhile, Emilie stayed home to take care of their ailing mother, thus destroying her sex life until now. She eventually meets someone (Mark Stanley) at the retreat who fulfills her in that way. But their pillow talk reveals that the retreat is not good at screening their patients.

Swedish director Lisa Langseth has a good eye and ear for visual and sound design. She could have taken us anywhere with this premise. But this drama about two sisters seems more interesting when they spend their time apart. When they’re together, all they do is yell at each other. And we all know what happens in movies about strife between sisters. They end up reconciling, and that moment doesn’t have the emotional weight that it’s aiming to have.