With their relationship in trouble, a young American couple travel to a fabled Swedish midsummer festival where a seemingly pastoral paradise transforms into a sinister, dread-soaked nightmare as the locals reveal their terrifying agenda.
Director: Ari Aster
Cast:
Release Date:
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Rated R for disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language
Runtime: 2 h 27 min
Review:
Midsommar, Ari Aster’s 2nd film, is a singular movie watching experience. It’s the type of film that’ll stick with you for a long while afterward. Aster’s direction is self assured and methodical while never being boring even with the film’s glacial pace. There’s a steady sense of dread from the outset and it never really lets up throughout the better part of the film. While this film isn’t quite as strong in the horror category as Hereditary was its still filled with plenty of starkly bleak imagery and iconography. At its center is Florence Pugh who carries the film and elevates some of the weaker portions of the film’s plot. Pugh’s ability to emote pain and grief comes through the screen which some of the film’s more trippy sequences all the more powerful. As for those hallucinatory sequences they are some of the most discombobulating and outright weird sequences I’ve seen on film. It's easy to compare Midsommar to the original Wicker Man, it does share various similarities with that film, but ultimately it’s it own wonderfully weird amalgam of that film and the 1981 film Possession, destined to become a cult classic in it's own right.
A-
