Is this elevated horror?

If it was produced by A24 or directed by someone like Ari Aster. Yeah it would be bestowed with the 'elevated' horror title and get better ratings from the pretentious lot on sites like Letterboxd.

It's all marketing.

This was marketed as a jump scare casual friendly horror film and that's how people will treat it even though it's got a much more clever statement than many 'arthouse' horror films.

This is 'elevated' horror without the snobby marketing and whilst trying to appeal to casuals (be entertaining). Less pretentious. I said as much when I first seen it. Anyone who calls this dumb and films like Midsommar or The Witch smart are absolute muppets who get spoonfed narratives by marketing and branding gimmicks.

Yep, it got to me a bit more than some other horrors I have watched recently.

I think it was indeed elevated. It also felt cautionary and fatalistic almost like a New Outer Limits episode.