Midsommar (2019)

[steve jaros]

Title: Midsommar

Tagline: Let the festivities begin.

Genre: Horror, Drama, Mystery

Director: Ari Aster

Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Anna Åström, Julia Ragnarsson, Liv Mjönes, Björn Andrésen, Louise Peterhoff, Anki Larsson, Klaudia Csányi, Anders Back, Gunnel Fred, Rebecka Johnston, Isabelle Grill, Tomas Engström, Archie Madekewe, Katarina Weidhagen van Hal, Ellora Torchia, Vilhelm Blomgren, Hampus Hallberg, Lars Väringer, Tove Skeidsvoll, Lennart R. Svensson, Anders Beckman, Balázs Megyeri

Release: 2019-07-03

Runtime: 147

Plot: A young couple travels to Sweden to visit their friend’s rural hometown and attend its mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly descends into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

 

[steve jaros]

Saw Midsommar yesterday and can recommend it pretty highly. It's a long film but doesn't feel like it, as the horror and dramatic tension build nicely throughout. Well written and acted, and with excellent pace.

802/1000

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Looks like a riff on The Wicker Man.

 

[TravisR]

Looks like a riff on The Wicker Man.

There's also a little bit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre thrown in there too. Not that it steals from TCSM but there's a couple points that I was reminded of it.

I saw this last night and it's a disturbing movie. Well worth seeing if you were fan of Hereditary. I was surprised that the theater was fairly full with a mainstream audience because it is definitely not a mainstream horror movie.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

There's also a little bit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre thrown in there too. Not that it steals from TCSM but there's a couple points that I was reminded of it.

I saw this last night and it's a disturbing movie. Well worth seeing if you were fan of Hereditary. I was surprised that the theater was fairly full with a mainstream audience because it is definitely not a mainstream horror movie.

What was the audience reaction to the picture? I think horror is popular because people want to be manipulated by a film. They want to see if it frightens or disturbs them. It's kind of like getting strapped into an amusement park ride where you are going to take the ride and safely be tossed around by it. It feels scary in the moment but you know these things won't really get you or harm you.

I thought Hereditary was a skillfully made film, certainly it set out to disturb people...

Spoiler: SPOILER

until the climax which just becomes unhinged.

It played as a family drama for a good portion of the running time and terribly sad drama at that. It did have a scene in it I wished I had never watched which kind of left me not wanting to revisit it.

I will probably check this out. Not sure if I will get to it in a cinema but I will at some point get around to it.

 

[TravisR]

What was the audience reaction to the picture?

Based on the grumbling I heard as people quickly went to the doors, I'm going to say it was mostly negative. You're right about why people like horror movies but Midsommar succeeds at being more than an amusement ride. Without getting into spoilers, the horror isn't fun, it's trying to unsettle people with disturbing events and very realistic violence. It's not like a Saw sequel (where it's just gross for the sake of being gross) and it's not 2 and a half hours of gore but when it is violent, it doesn't look away from how horrible violence is.

 

[Malcolm R]

Looks like a riff on The Wicker Man.

Amazing. That is word-for-word exact the phrase that popped into my mind when I read the plot summary above.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It's 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but I can't trust that because Hereditary is 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and that is the most inert, dreadfully slow, poorly constructed movie I've ever seen. There's something about Aster's brand of horror than really works for some people and really doesn't for other people, and I definitely fall into the latter camp.

 

[Wayne_j]

I haven't seen this movie yet, but I liked Hereditary much more than I did The Witch. I do think that Critics are more inclined to like movies that are strange because it stands out to them among the 100+ movies they have to go to theaters to watch a year.

 

[benbess]

I liked it! Wow. My rating: "A-"

 

[Malcolm R]

Cinemascore is C+. Hereditary had a D+.

 

[steve jaros]

Looks like a riff on The Wicker Man.

Agreed. But IMO it is considerably better than both the 1973 original WM or the 2000s Cage version.

 

[benbess]

Cinemascore is C+. Hereditary had a D+.

Imho Midsommar is MUCH better than Hereditary.

My rating for Hereditary would be about a "C," but as I already mentioned Midsommar is an A- for me.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Saw it last night, kinda scarred from the viewing experience...

 

[Malcolm R]

Story in EW yesterday that the director is planning a "director's cut" that will be "at least 30 minutes longer."

I'm not sure a 3-hour horror film is necessary, but for those that want it, there you go.

https://ew.com/movies/2019/07/11/midsommar-extended-ari-aster-ama/

 

[Tino]

Saw it last night, kinda scarred from the viewing experience...

In a good or bad way?

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Imho Midsommar is MUCH better than Hereditary.

I'll have to disagree with you on that. While I think Midsommar certainly has a more interesting story, I think it suffers from bad pacing. I think it would have been an amazing film at 100-110 minutes, but some of those scenes drag on far too long. I can't even imagine what the extra added 30 minutes are going to do to the pacing. Hereditary was tight and flowed much better by comparison.

 

[Patrick Sun]

In a good or bad way?

Yes.

 

[SamT]

I liked half the movie and not much the rest. Not a fan of gore and I feel showing too much stuff is not scary and not necessary. Every time they supposedly wanted to shock, all I could think of was how the prop department made the Silicone stuff!

The music and the mood was great. I feel it could have been a great movie with less showing.

 

[JoeStemme]

Coming off of his intense HERIDITARY, Ari Aster's follow-up certainly doesn't let up in the dysfunctional family drama department from the get go. A young woman, Dani (Florence Pugh), is stunned by tragedy as brutal and lacerating as anything in Aster's first film. But, even with that backdrop, the central story here is more about Dani's flagging four year old relationship with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor). Still reeling, Dani discovers that her beau is going to go on a European road trip with two of his college buddies, Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter). They have been invited by a Swedish student Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) to attend a summer festival in his homeland. Dani, kinda sorta invites herself.

Once they arrive in Sweden, Pelle informs that this isn't just any annual fest - it's a very special once every 90 years bash. Of course, anybody who's seen the movie's obvious (and acknowledged) model, 1973's THE WICKER MAN, knows -- bad things are going to happen (more on that later).

To Aster's credit, he doesn't just follow the typical horror movie playbook. He takes his time detailing the structure of the cult. The Scandinavian Midnight Sun setting gives it an eerie glow (the digital photography is both a plus and a minus here, with the gleaming whites sometimes veering into a milky artificial look). The story unfolds slowly and it takes a while for it to get to the heart of the matter. But, once it does, there is a certain intensity that builds, even if it never rises about a low simmer.

On the downside, the characters aren't very interesting, save for Dani. Outside of Pugh (who, since her breakthrough in LADY MACBETH has continued to prove to be an actress to watch), the performances are mostly flat (and that's being kind to a couple of them). If you don't care about Christian or his friends, Dani's personal trajectory is trimmed. While showing admirable restraint, Aster's pacing eventually becomes more than a bit protracted. The viewer knows where it is headed, even if the characters are too dense to see it. Those intricate ritual details are interesting at first, but, soon one wonders if Aster and his editors fell so in love with them that they lost the thread along the way, more concerned with fetishistic attention to minutiae than telling a compelling story (Aster has recently said that he is going to add another 30 minutes or more to the already bloated 147 minute run time!). At a certain point, the torpid pacing, simpleminded characters and weak development veers it into unintentional humor (yes, there are some deliberate sardonic bits). The climactic scene (while predictable) has a certain grand guinol quality that partly redeems the bloat.

P.S. On THE WICKER MAN comparisons. Aster has copped to the fact that his producers wanted a "bloodier" version of that tale. Now, as pointed out in the piece, Aster adapts Director Robin Hardy and writer Anthony Shaffer's (SLEUTH, FRENZY) piece with his own details and emphasis. Still, it's more than an homage. The outlines of the two movies are easily traced upon each other. Naming the male lead "Christian" is more than a bit obvious (I guess naming him "Edward Woodward" would have been too much?). Aster goes into far more details, but, all the elements are there in the original work (and, it's no small matter to point out that in a horror movie, what is NOT shown, can be more important - and effective - than what is). There are also more than a few 'similarities' with the much derided Nic Cage 2006 official remake (Bear Suit, but, mercifully, no punching of women in the face!). And, the ending? Really? Aster couldn't have come up with ANYTHING different?