So of course, I was excited for Midsommar. While he seems ready to do so, he also feels guilt-tripped into staying after Dani's sister and parents die in a murder-suicide. It wants me to feel and think something specific and I’m not sure that I do. There is a moment in these early scenes that sets the thematic tone of the movie that follows. Perhaps the director’s voice shines through a little too much. Native Swedes will have a better idea when it comes to the local lore. How much of each? Leaving the theater, it was more “what just happened to me?” than “what did I just see?”. ), Opinion posts about movies and television. I’m leaving by the wayside any attempt at sounding intellectual in this review, because I’m not an expert reviewer, and it’s difficult to characterize how I felt from the time the Americans reached Sweden. Copyright © 2019 Salon.com, LLC. The flowers for sale. *Don’t get me wrong – I do enjoy carefully placed cheap-thrill jump scares! I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there has been a controversy over the character Ruben, a character born of incest whose presence in the movie has been criticized as ableist and even eugenicist. For me, it was an unsettling and inexplicably compelling visceral experience. He is simply one more victim of the cult, a plot point which, if anything, illustrates how the cult is able to weaponize the concept of empathy in order to create an insular community of evil. He could become another auteur director if he continues on this path. Perhaps that is the most horrifying idea of all embedded in "Midsommar" — that there are no positive outcomes, no worthwhile solutions, only more problems and more pain no matter which way you turn. That’s the thing about this film. My inability to find an item that I needed. SALON ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. ( Log Out /  Writer/director Ari Aster (Hereditary) and independent film distributor A24 bring us a masterpiece of psychological horror in Midsommar. Our tendency is to think of horror unfolding in the dark, but Midsommar is horror unfolding in a place that never gets dark. Especially considering that they’re still wavering on where to train their focus in their graduate studies. The Wrap Reviews: Midsommar (No Spoilers), Read It Before You Watch It: The Cartel Trilogy (Review), 3 comics to read if you’re excited for Black Widow, The Wrap Reviews: Softness of Bodies (Amazon Prime), The Book Shelf: Thrillers – the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, The Wrap Reviews: Marriage Story (No Spoilers), The Wrap Reviews: Little Women (No Spoilers), The Wrap Reviews: Ready Or Not (No Spoilers). I would recommend that you see it in any case. The themes, metaphors and symbolism in it were really cool and it made me take note of the name Ari Aster. I don’t know whether a film this macabre, graphic, and psychologically disturbing can be an Academy Awards contender, but if it can, Midsommar deserves nominations. When the audience is first introduced to protagonist Dani Ardor (Florence Pugh), she is taking Ativan to treat an anxiety condition so severe that her boyfriend Christian Hughes (Jack Reynor) is emotionally exhausted and his friends Josh (William Jackson Harper), Mark (Will Poulter) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) are urging him to dump her. It’s an experience. If you’re looking for a review of the film, with a few basic plot details but no major spoilers, then read this instead. No spoilers. In that movie, James McAvoy played a man whose dissociative identity disorder literally turns him into a monster, and because his mental illness formed the foundation of the story's premise, it became impossible to appreciate the film's artistic merits independently from its offensive underlying concept. I was jumpy and irritable. (Short Horror October, day 6 + self-pity fest! The cult leader needlessly explained everything to the audience even though we had been there for the ride for two hours, and kind of already got the picture. While he is objectified and, by Aster's own admission, treated "more as a symbol, as an idea, than he is even as a character," he isn't depicted as a monster or a freak. ), Taurus rising. Midsommar is a true WTF-fest. Aside from being selfish and cruel, it's also ironic, considering that few people are actually as stable as they'd like to depict themselves as being. While Dani is initially as horrified by the cult's actions as Christian and his friends, she is gradually lured in by them because the normal world she has left isn't exactly an appealing alternative. Skillful usage of foreshadowing and symbolism help the film to burrow under the skin. (Working out: suggestions from a non-professional.). ( Log Out /  Desk in distress. The happening is more horrific than the thing, itself. (September Favorites! These are heady concepts for any film to tackle, but "Midsommar" is a masterpiece because it does so through a brilliantly executed folk horror premise (as Aster said in one interview, "it’s a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film.") As the tag-line says, let the festivities begin. After reading that he wrote this film after a break-up, I’m now struggling to see what it was he was really trying to tell us. Spoilers ahead! An ancient festival in Sweden, now, that would be different. I felt exactly the same way. ------------------------------------------, as Aster said in one interview, "it’s a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film. That’s what this film was marketed as, and that’s what the film seemed to be for the first hour. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. July 23, 2019 That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments On Sunday, we went to the movies anticipating a good scare, because we thought we were about to see a normal horror flick. It left me squirming in my seat and agonizing over the ending for days after I saw it. ), The hostess with the mostess. You have a real gift! Nothing about Midsommar turned out the way I thought it would. All rights reserved. Midsommar is a film that does things to you. It’s clear to me that Aster has a style and I like it (for the most part). This is how the audience will look watching this. The writing, direction, and acting are superb. It’s chilling to the core. In Midsommar, we experience the horror of nature in a peaceful, Scandinavian countryside. There are no jump-scare cheap thrills in this film. Spoilers ahead! The rest of her life is going to be spent as part of a stultifying cult, she has to live with having brutally murdered a man who for all of his faults did not deserve to die, and she has merely traded the coldness of her previous life for a tyrannical alternative that will doom her to die when she is 72. Now it may be my fault that my expectations led me to believe I’d get a more conventional horror, which in a way I did. Hereditary was one of the best horror films in recent memory, it perfectly tread the fine line between horrifyingly chilling and shockingly disturbing. On three-day weekends, procrastination, and negatives into positives. He’s happy to take us on this trip to experience the festival… and a trip, it is. When we stopped at the store after the movie, I made my way through the aisles feeling disoriented and panicky. The festival takes place only once every 90 years! Midsommar is disturbing to the extreme. But in this one, he lingers at times on the graphic imagery making it seem like unnecessary sadism. Woah that was intense! Or maybe I do, and I just don’t like the underlying message. It’s an excellent film. ( Log Out /  (Short Horror October, day 1 + little life updates), Waiting for the wind to whistle. The scene could have been employed as a dark joke — Christian and his friends had just discussed how it seemed like one crisis after another with Dani, and here we go again  — but it actually foreshadows the payoff of the movie's premise. It's that they have a choice to extend empathy to someone who needs it, but decide that because she isn't easy to be with she isn't worth the time. In 2017 M. Night Shyamalan released "Split," which worked exceptionally well as a horror movie but was extremely problematic in its depiction of mental illness. ), Small victories. Dani may have technically survived, but only at a grave cost. Laughing all the way to the blood bank. I was too traumatized to be smug. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. It took me days to recover! But after a while, it felt like more of a sadistic slasher in which the disturbing gore was only there for shock value rather than necessity to the story.