48) Midsommar (2019)

Do you feel held by him? Does he feel like home to you?

Director
Ari Aster

Cast
Florence Pugh - Dani
Jack Reynor - Christian
Vilhelm Blomgren - Pelle
William Jackson Harper - Josh
Will Poulter - Mark
Isabelle Grill - Maja

I had to write something about this movie despite an unwritten rule I have not to write about popular new horror releases on this blog. I set this page up for obscure titles and B-horror movies. But the 2019 movie Midsommar gives me a lot to talk about.
It's certainly no obscure film nor B-horror flick. It doesn't deserve to be, either.
This was going to be my 50th review as a sort of treat to myself for making it through 50 schlocky movies. That's why I picked this particular new release which has received good reviews. But I chose another, more appropriate title be my fiftieth review.
(Look out...SPOILERS AHEAD)
I saw a trailer for Midsommar when I went to see Pet Sematary. It caught my interest. And with the positive reviews it received, not to mention having Ari Aster (Hereditary) in the director's chair, I was anxious to see it. And see it, I did.
I watched it a week prior to writing this review, and in that time I've thought a lot about what I had seen.
There's so much happening in this movie both overtly and subtly. Hidden faces. Subtle meanings. Surreal imagery. Emotion. I feel it deserves a second viewing before I throw my thoughts and comments out to the public. But there's so many movies and so little time.
This movie has been called a "folk horror film." I had to look that term up on Google. It's a sub-genre characterized by European, pagan traditions.
If it were up to me, I'd call it "trippy horror." There's lots of trippy horror in Midsommar thanks to depicted trippy drug use. It's not quite the Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas kind of trippy. Midsommar is more nature-y than that. Hallucinogens play an integral part in the story. It's about enhancing the feels.
In the story, Dani Ardor and Christian Hughes have been dating for a few years, though Hughes' interest in the relationship has clearly diminished over time. He's become distant. Still, he strings her along.
Ardor is struggling to help her troubled sister, Terri. She then becomes traumatized after Terri kills herself and their parents by filling her house with carbon monoxide. This tragedy strains Hughes as he's all that Ardor has for support. And he's already at a point were he's fatigued at how dependent his girlfriend already is.
A few months later, Hughes, who's a grad student in cultural anthropology, is invited to attend a midsommar celebration by his Swedish friend, Pelle.
Hughes friends, Mark and Josh, are also invited to attend the event which is going to be held at an ancestral commune in central Sweden.
When Ardor finds out, she asks to come along though Josh and Mark, who dislike Ardor, prefer she stay behind. Of course they certainly won't tell her that.
Hughes is also reluctant to have her tag along, but agrees because he thinks he has to consider they are dating, and she's been through a traumatic situation.
When they arrive at the commune, they meet an English couple who are there on the invitation of Pelle's commune brother, Ingemar.

Florence Pugh as Dani.

He offers the visitors some mind altering mushrooms, which cause Ardor to have vivid hallucinations of her sister.
Things become surreal from this point on. Despite the gentle nature, and religious peace on the surface, there's a foreboding vibe that slowly emerges.
When the visitors witness a ceremony where two commune elders are honored, and then taken to a cliff where they leap to their death, tension and fear escalates quickly.
The subtle surrealism depicted in the set designs and other imagery is unforgettable, distinct and well used.
Director Ari Aster commented in an interview that this movie is really a drawn out break-up movie dressed as folk horror.
The tension between Ardor and Hughes amidst their strained and tired relationship is evident throughout the movie.
They depict this very well, though the conclusion seems rather extreme and unnecessary. This is especially true as the two aren't married nor even engaged.
Hughes is cowardly and unkind to string his girlfriend along despite his lack of interest in continuing on. Still, his demise isn't warranted.
The scene with the elders walking off the cliff plays out like a fever-induced nightmare. For a horror movie, or as a way to portray a pivotal moment through a harsh and horrific scene, that's not a criticism. Actually, it's a compliment.
In fact, I could see a writer conjuring up a story like this just around that one scene if it had been a dream or an image that popped in someone's head. This scene depicts how backwards and dedicated the group is, and it's is difficult to watch though played out wonderfully. It encompasses two sides - the dedicated followers who welcome the deaths the witness, and the visitors who are horrified by it. Both sides are summed up in this suicide scene.
What makes this movie stand out as a great horror movie is that there's no jump scares.
I find myself frequently rolling my eyes with recent horror movies because too many of them rely on jump scares and elements that have quickly become tiresome - dark and gritty atmospheres, low lighting, and built up suspense to lame payoffs.
When recent horror movies step away from all that typical stuff, it's almost encouraging.
The remake of Stephen King's It has evil creeping in some dark and creepy places (i.e. the sewers), but for the most part, the monster Pennywise lurks in the daylight as well. No time of day is safe.
Director Ari Aster proved he can scare without subjecting the audience to lame horror clichés with the 2018 film Hereditary - another fantastic film. He didn't rely on jump scares then either. For a supernatural horror film, the imagery and story line was scary and disturbing enough.
Midsommar uses some surrealism to make the audience feel they're seeing something peculiar and maybe unsettling.
Florence Pugh is great in this film. Again, horror movies too often use the over-emotional female protagonist that can be tiresome. But here, she has reason to be emotional. It's not over done. It's completely understandable. And (POSSIBLE SPOILER) it doesn't conclude on that note.
Pugh is convincing in her role.
As for the rest of the cast, they're not the usual crew of college students who are just asking to get picked off one by one. They're not entirely predictable like teens or college age kids would be in other horror movies, save for William Jackson Harper's character who's breaking of the rules of the commune is obviously not going to end well. But just what will happen to him, and when, is intriguing and tense. Like the rest of the movie's unsettling nature, the rule of storytelling to show, and not tell, is done fantastically well in Midsommar.
I previously watched the thriller The Sacrament (2013), and pre-judged Midsommar as a similar story. But it's quite different.

The Sacrament takes a large amount of inspiration from Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre in the 1970s. It's also shot in the "found footage" style.
Midsommar has more substantive elements of emotion-driven horror visible through the consistent ceremonial behavior of the passionate and dedicated cult members. It's much more "Children of the Corn-esque" but not as blatant on the surface.
Midsommar centers on a cult that's sanctimonious, absolutely dedicated, sold out, and completely misguided. They're much more dangerous than just simply being all evil. If that were the case, the audience would know exactly what they're dealing with. Otherwise, the audience has to really work their way into the cult, through the members and the rituals alongside the characters to see what is really at the heart of it all.
I thought the movie was too long at a running time of two and half hours. It dragged a little, but not enough to have me completely loose interest.
The intrigued continued to build gradually, and I had to keep watching.
The use of high angles and arial views added to the movie's spiritual yet sinister nature. And on top of that, the original use of cultish music to maintain that underlying evil disguising itself as good, or divine, is great.
Everything is drug inducing...and the angles taking the audience to areas we couldn't physically go, along with the subtle distortion of some of the scenes shows what our characters are going through. It all just plays so well together.
I can see this going down in horror history as a notable cult classic like The Wicker Man (1973) and The Witchfinder General (1968).
I don't feel like I've done the movie justice with just one viewing so I plan to see it again for sure. There's so much to see.