You can always restrict yourself to a subset of C++ that takes advantage of RAII (resource handling is extremely painful in C), and get performance benefits like move semantics, without the insanely complex stuff.

I love C, but C++ has worthwhile advantages even if you heavily restrict which features you use.

No offense intended to your perspective, but I do find it a little amusing that C++23, which was generally considered a disappointingly small update due to COVID complications, was the breaking point in complexity.

C is the new vinyl.