Midsommar **** (2019, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm Blomgren) – Movie Review

Writer/director Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) is quite a nasty, unpleasant experience, but it keeps the faith to being an actual horror film, is very, very smart, both script-wise and visually, and stays hauntingly in the mind long afterwards, though that isn’t necessarily a good thing. If you actually want nightmares, why don’t you just have you own. You don’t really need Midsommar cluttering up your head and messing with it.

The best thing about it is that it is about as far from a mainstream American movie as it could be while still staying relatively mainstream. It is a bit of an art movie, but not too much, because it keeps the faith to being an actual horror film. It needs a bit of patience. It is a bit of a slow burn, but it burns brightly and strongly.

Aster takes his trippy story at epic length, which isn’t entirely necessary, but he does keep the audience gripped through. You know it’s a long movie, but the two and a half hours go moving along compellingly, grippingly. It hooks you. Where is this leading? What is going to happen? It that really going to happen? OMG! An increasingly eerie sense of doom for a couple of hours leads to a half hour of horror, some of it fairly full on, justifying the unusual 18 certificate maybe, though not really. It is mainly horror of the mind. That’s why it stays in the mind, and it’s hard to shake it off.

The film does have the virtue of breaking down horror genre expectations (thank God, no creepy doll!) and it would be unique, that is if it wasn’t for The Wicker Man, to which it bears a considerable resemblance. It follows roughly the same course to roughly the same conclusion. It manages to be its own thing, though mainly only by changing the setting to Sweden and having the cult victims Americans in trouble abroad again. In Europe again actually. Why do Americans go to Europe when the movies are full of dire warnings? Look at Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Far from Home Peter seems a bright boy, yet off he goes to Venice, Italy, where there is trouble ahead. Good job he has super-powers.

Unfortunately, Dani and Christian do not not have super-powers when they head for to Sweden to visit a rural village’s mid-summer festival. The locals are a bit strange from the get-go, but the Yanns have no idea just how strange. They have fallen at the mercy of a murderous pagan cult.

Midsommar turns from idyllic to ominous pretty darned quick. The bickering young couple have the four-year itch. She is distraught about the deaths of her family, and very needy. He is cold and withholding, and doesn’t really love her.  They are played very well indeed by Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor, relishing their unusual roles. Vilhelm Blomgren also scores as Pelle, the man who got them to Sweden in the first place, along with Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter). The five meet two other strangers in Sweden – Brits Simon (Archie Madekwe) and Connie (Ellora Torchia). These last four roles are not very well written or developed, giving the actors problems to seem more than just cyphers.

Aster wrote it as his ‘break-up film’, and the scenes between the young American couple have a strong credibility and emotional pull that isn’t anywhere else in the film, which is all freaky fantasy. It is a strange mix, an odd brew, though whatever it is made of, it works a treat.

The creepy Swedes include Anders Back, Mats Blomgren (as the aptly named Odd) and Björn Andrésen, the one-time Tadzio from Death in Venice (1971).

Midsommar isn’t really scary, just bizarre, sinister and creepy, and then grim, grisly and gruesome, and a bit sick, like, say The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is sick. It is a true horror movie, and a very posh, stylish art movie version of one. It belongs in a film festival, but there, happily, it is at the local Odeon. Its design is a particular art work, thanks to inspired production designer Henrik Svensson.

Incidentally, it was shot in Budapest, Hungary, begging the question why it isn’t set there too. Maybe they don’t have pagan cultists in Hungary? Only asking!

It is rated R for disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and strong language.

Production was announced immediately after Aster’s Hereditary.

It runs an epic 147 minutes, and an even more epic 171 minutes in the Director’s Cut.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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