Directed By Ari Aster

Starring – Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper

The Plot – A young American couple (Pugh and Reynor), fly to a rural town in Sweden for a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival after experiencing a death in the family. Not long after the couple’s arrival, their trip unfolds into a hallucinatory nightmare when the visitors are invited to drink some sort of concoction that seemingly screws with their perception of time, and are targeted by the sinister leaders of a pagan cult.

Rated R for nudity, violence and gore, scenes involving drug use, and some adult language

POSITIVES

– Shot composition variety. Like Aster’s previous film, “Hereditary”, this one is a visual masterpiece full of unnerving and unorthodox angles that sizzle with experimentation. While there’s so much to break down here visually, the sequences involving mirrors to display a character out of frame, but still in the context of the conversation are only the tip of the iceberg for this man’s supreme intellect behind the lens. In addition, we are treated to many overhead shots that cover things from above, room transitions that follow a character into another area of the stage, long take sequences that trade off character focus every few seconds, and an adoring admiration for the boldly vibrant set pieces that hold such weight with any particular scene that they persist through an elevated ambush of mood-setting lighting. If you take nothing else from Ari’s films, understand that he’s a director whose visual captivation always reaches the heights of ambition set by his screenplays, and because of such we are treated to a presentation that mentally and visually stimulates us with each frame.

– Authentication in sound mixing. The sound production team is on top of their game here, echoing the vibes of realism and authenticity in dialogue audibility that allows it to flow with believability. One thing that drives me nuts in movies is when other products of the environment are obstructed out of what we’re hearing front and center, but in “Midsommar” we get multiple conversations existing at the same time, with the ones closest to our camera being dominant in volume level. If it weren’t for this, the scene would sound like a convoluted mess, but the articulation to detail gives the scene this transcending quality against film that makes its world feel very established and lived-in, establishing that life persists around what we’re seeing at all times. This will no doubt give great replay value to the film, if even only to intrude deeper into what I couldn’t fully dedicate myself to in my viewing, for fear of missing something in the foreground.

– My personal interpretation. Aster as a writer is as abstract as a Van Gogh painting, but I feel that “Midsommar” attains a greater accessibility level with its audience because its themes are slightly more grounded in obviousness than that of “Hereditary”. For my money, I picked up on a lot of the dangers once again of manipulation associated with a cult lifestyle, but even more than that the film triggered my senses for the vulnerability associated with grief and longing that makes that particular person wide open for meandering, especially someone with mental illness (See Hereditary). This is made even more apparent by the drug stranglehold that this Pagan group holds over their newfound visitors, leaving it possible for them to experience anything when mind-altering consumption begins to take over. It’s clear that Aster has a desire to exploit the grip that the manipulative have over the weak-minded, and it leads to a ride through material that not only makes you emphasize with the victims, but also proves that the greatest movie villains sometimes come in human form.

– Does it scare? What’s so intoxicating about the material’s frights isn’t so much that it attains a level of chills so consistent that it makes them feel like the films from our childhood that terrorized us, but that the material itself is limited in color for what it exposes. There are very few scenes of actual gore throughout the film, saving those moments of red for the time when they impact most with a splash of artistic integrity, but the real story is on the group’s poisonous atmosphere that visually hints that everything is alright, even when we feel something more sinister taking shape from beneath us. The drug paranoia scenes conjured up feelings of helplessness that do so much more than simply scare me, they mentally wound me with regards to how easy to believe that all of this transpiring really is. Even more appealing, Aster saves his greatest climax for the film’s final shot, and it drilled such a combination of fear and sadness within me that prevailed at its most anxiety-riddled, blowing everything off in a way that will preserve nightmare fuel for anyone who puts themselves in the shoes of the protagonist like I often do.

– Admirable performances. This is where the film could’ve easily fallen apart, as its cast of mostly dramatic unknowns really took presence of the stage given before them, and captivated me in such a way that seemed silly of my doubt for them in the first place. Jack Reynor, especially during the drugged sequences really moved me to impressive levels of depth for how his helplessness is communicated in just a few simple looks. His reactions to the drugs felt every bit as earned as they did revealing of someone who goes through the many stages of drug combating, and it brought forth easily his single greatest performance to date. Will Poulter was also a ball of fun as the film’s steady comedic humor. Poulter is a Stiffler of sorts, in that all he wants to do is get high, get laid, and spend a week of vacation far from his college campus, and Will’s constant presence endeared me through a series of laughs and blunt dialogue depositions that made him one of the more tolerable douchebags in modern day cinema. Even with all of this however, it’s definitely Florence Pugh’s show, as she steals the command once more in a transformation that is only rivaled by her turn in 2016’s “Lady Macbeth”. Pugh endures the single worst event of her life in the film’s opening ten minutes, and from there is a roller-coaster of fiery emotional registry and dangerous curiosity that makes it easy to see why one causes the other. But especially during the third act, it’s Pugh’s facial resonation that says as much in a look as a lesser talent requires in a two hour film, and while “Lady Macbeth” made her a buzzworthy name, it’s her work here as Dani that makes her an ever-lasting presence of the silver screen.

– Stunning cinematography. Aster has found himself a dependable friend in cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, as just like his work in “Hereditary”, Pawel takes us through a drug-riddled lucid nightmare that dazzles on a completely different spectrum. As to where “Hereditary” worked wonders in its domination of darkness, and the tricks played on us in the shadows, “Midsommar” impresses in its sunny, hazy circumference that takes the horror in visual directions where it’s rarely ever gone. In sparsely being able to escape daytime in this film, Pawel associates the airy sparkling majority with a sense of unnerving table dressing that all but communicates to us that something is wrong for how different this is not only for sunlight rules, but also for the horror genre in general. In such, Pawel adds layers to entrancing visuals, that really force you to admire the sadistic in ways that are otherwise treated as shock humor in weaker horror cinema.

– Complete production design. Everything works here. From the white choreographed fashions of this Pagan community, to the use of flowers everywhere to cleverly mock life in death situations, to the buildings that depict scripture of its believers, everything here is given proper time and detail to nourish credibility for a religion that has taken place long before we as an audience stumbled upon it. Likewise the film’s make-up and prosthetics are as timely as the film’s paced-out blood dispersion, stealing our attention during scenes where its extreme and gratifying nature allow it to stand out when used in moments where we truly weren’t expecting it. I had a slight problem with some dummy models lacking familiarity during certain scenes, but I can forgive it when everything else here is alluring in seamlessly playing into the color scheme established with the gorgeous cinematography that I previously mentioned.

– Ambitious run time. Some people will have a problem with the 140 minute run time that “Midsommar” exudes, but there is literally nothing that I would remove or condense in this film to serve a more fluently paced final product. This is definitely a slow-burn film, and if that bothers you, you’d be best to stay away from it. For me, the film’s ample requirement of rules and world-building from within this community really allowed me to interpret what I was seeing without loaded exposition dumps that would feel unnatural for the progression of human interaction. Visually, the film takes us through the scriptures in a way that puts audiences paying attention one step ahead at all times, rewarding them in a convenience that our character’s unfortunately didn’t receive for their ignorance towards it. There has also been complaints about the film’s first twenty minutes, and what it means to the rest of the film, and to those people I ask if they were watching the same film that I did. Without those scenes, we never understand what makes Dani so vulnerable. Why her ball of nerves feel like they are going to crash at any particular moment. How can you say these scenes hold no weight with the rest of the film? Overall, the pacing was sluggish periodically, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t fully invested at all times. The sight, sound, characters, and development of a group of kids so far from their homely abodes outlines a cloud of ambiguity that would require you to be without a pulse if you weren’t at least curious by how far this group was going to take it.

– Rhythmic beats. When searching the credits for who musically scored this film, I came across the name The Haxan Cloak, and my curiosity got the better of me. Upon digging deeper, I found out that not only is this the team behind two of my favorite shows in “Stranger Things” and “Castle Rock”, but also the very same people who nearly saved 2017’s “Triple 9”. In general, the music here is constant and intrusive, sometimes being worked into the scene in a way where the characters themselves take over with their rhythmic hymns that add a whole different level of creepy to an already riveting sequence. The Haxan Cloak assorts a collection of organ and fiddle numbers that garner a level of fear for all of the reasons that don’t feel as obvious when you listen to them, and evolve into a current of magnetic macabre that audibly conveys the conscience not of our protagonists, but rather of the Pagan cult that make up an overwhelming majority of the characters we see on-screen.

NEGATIVES

– Unnecessary horror tropes. This is nit-picking, but if I pointed to something that bothered me in the film it would easily be the formulaic expulsion midway through the film, that felt slightly jam-packed to exist without escaping slasher vibes that it totally didn’t require. In my opinion, I could’ve used more pacing in subtle disappearances. This would allow the film to better sell the ambiguity and mystery of uncertainty surrounding the victim, establishing a greater weight for the bodies that start to stack up with very little nuance to their removal. In addition to this, there are scenes that were unintentionally funny that I wish Aster would’ve instilled a retake for. There’s one scene in particular that was truly compromising to the emotional impact of that reveal, and I feel it would’ve been better spent on a man who enjoyed 99% of the movie to not be laughing during the scene that is so obviously meant to be treated in terror.

My Grade: 9/10 or A