Midsommar is an eerie, graphic, disturbing film, but it doesn't feel nearly as much of an emotionally tense and soul-rending film as Hereditary. But maybe that's entirely the point.
Dani Ardor is traumatized by being unable to intervene and halt the suicide of her sister which also was a murder of their parents. Her boyfriend is a manipulative jerk who now feels forced to stay in their dead-end relationship, and Dani accepts a rhetorical invitation to join him and his friends on a trip to a Swedish commune one of their friends lives in.
Midsommar has no pretensions that the viewer won't immediately be suspicious of the Hårga commune. It's already been an upsetting movie and Euro-pagan communes in fiction have murder-cult written all over them. But the film takes its time in exploring the Hårga culture, sickening and loving, and it seems to deliberately cast the traveling party as unlikeable horror-victim archetypes to mark for death. You're likely to engage with the movie like a more typical horror film where you root for the villains. You might also get swept up in the fantasy look and spiritualism and start viewing the story as a karmic fairy tale. But this is not a supernatural story at all, and director Ari Aster wants you to step back out of the voyeuristic popcorn mindset and evaluate this story on realistic terms—that's where it becomes a true horror film.
Through sunny, bright and extremely subtle creepy psychedelic visuals, the film seems to operate much like the cult does—luring you into a haze where the lesser evil seems to be the empathic, close-knit community. But the film acts like a test—why are you willing to forgive them? And is Dani really being helped?
Film An unnervingly seductive horror tale.
Midsommar is an eerie, graphic, disturbing film, but it doesn't feel nearly as much of an emotionally tense and soul-rending film as Hereditary. But maybe that's entirely the point.
Dani Ardor is traumatized by being unable to intervene and halt the suicide of her sister which also was a murder of their parents. Her boyfriend is a manipulative jerk who now feels forced to stay in their dead-end relationship, and Dani accepts a rhetorical invitation to join him and his friends on a trip to a Swedish commune one of their friends lives in.
Midsommar has no pretensions that the viewer won't immediately be suspicious of the Hårga commune. It's already been an upsetting movie and Euro-pagan communes in fiction have murder-cult written all over them. But the film takes its time in exploring the Hårga culture, sickening and loving, and it seems to deliberately cast the traveling party as unlikeable horror-victim archetypes to mark for death. You're likely to engage with the movie like a more typical horror film where you root for the villains. You might also get swept up in the fantasy look and spiritualism and start viewing the story as a karmic fairy tale. But this is not a supernatural story at all, and director Ari Aster wants you to step back out of the voyeuristic popcorn mindset and evaluate this story on realistic terms—that's where it becomes a true horror film.
Through sunny, bright and extremely subtle creepy psychedelic visuals, the film seems to operate much like the cult does—luring you into a haze where the lesser evil seems to be the empathic, close-knit community. But the film acts like a test—why are you willing to forgive them? And is Dani really being helped?