Holy cow. My mind is blown. Everything from the title, to the director dying 5 days after submitting the final cut, to the location chosen to film the cult party. These links are a long read but a great explanation of the movie.
So many unbelievable things that I've come across in this group are confirmed by this movie. I saw someone mention it in a comment months ago and glad I finally came around to watching it. It was very strange in the beginning, but you have to remember you're not watching a regular movie, you're watching someone trying to show you what's going on without explicitly saying it. After reading the above articles I am just blown away.
Kubrick hadn’t made a movie in 12 years and anticipation was huge. It was a three year shoot too, which is unprecedented in Hollywood, as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman basically had to put their careers on hold for this. And for those three years rumours were flying around about what Kubrick was making and what was happening on the set. People also knew that Kubrick hadn’t let the studio see what he was doing for those three years, so by the time he showed his first cut, it was public knowledge that was happening. At that point it was known in the public as an essentially finished film, given how perfectionistic Kubrick was. So even if they kill him off, they can’t shelve the movie because people know he delivered a finished cut that would be presentable.