Midsommar

The movie starts out promising and with the interesting backdrop of a Swedish pagan cults. However, it succeeds only in shocking with horrifying imagery of bursting heads/faces and other violence that serves only to hide the fact that this movie is bad at everything else. The character development is extremely bad. We are supposed to care about the main character so the writers came up with a shocking and sad beginning. But we still dont develop much sympathy because the main character (yes I already forgot the name) acts unreasonably and there are no real moments where we get close to her. The plot is extremely foreseeable. Without wanting to spoil much, all characters from the group going to Sweden have happen exactly what you'd expect to happen to them. There is no finesse in story-telling at all and instead cheap attempts at foreshadowing end up as just another horror-movie cliche. The camera work is OK but often too bright and sometimes turns for no reason. It is an attempt of foreshadowing or setting the atmosphere but it is lost on me.

All in all, this movie might be for you if you like to be shocked by violence in a novel setting. Don't watch this with kids or anyone remotely sensitive to violence. Also don't watch it if you care for character development, plot-depth or have good taste in movies, generally.

I watched this at home on BluRay from my public library, not my wife's type of movie.

This was made by the same writer/director that brought us "Hereditary" a year earlier, I like this one much more. It is confusing much of the time but when it is all over you realize it is a fable of sorts for the lead character, Dani, to come to some resolution from the loss of her family and coming to terms with her dud of a boyfriend.

Look up the entire lyrics of 'Hotel California' by The Eagles, with this movie in mind you can find many parallels.

I already was a Florence Pugh fan from her roles in Lady MacBeth (2016) and Fighting With My Family (2019). Here she is Dani who tragically loses her sister and parents, in grief accompanies her boyfriend and three other guys to Sweden in late June to witness, and ultimately participate in, a ritualistic Pagan festival. But it also goes deeper, to the core of the group's beliefs. By the end Dani achieves resolution, the other four are not so fortunate.

This is a really strange movie once they get to Sweden, there is very explicit and gory violence, there is a big non-erotic sex scene with a number of nude characters. Everything is designed to shock the senses of the viewer. I would not like to see movies like this on a regular basis but as a one-off experience I found it a totally worthwhile 2 1/2 hours.

Since I'm swedish I found this really funny and absurd, the wierd traditions were obviously inspired from The Wickerman more than the actual swedish tradition, Midsommar. I'm also really glad I watched it in my home and not at the cinema with other people, because there were scenes I laughed at and I didn't want to laugh at scenes with others, becuase it wasn't really funny. I coudn't help laughing, but at the same time feel really uncomfortable. I enjoyed this movie a lot, every scene made me intrigued and dumbfounded. Sry about the spelling and what not, first rating an all.

"I have always felt held. By a family... a real family. Do you feel held?"

One of the most universal and innately human desires is a sense of belonging. The human brain is not meant to be alone; we are evolved to be a part of something. Belonging fundamentally allows us to form our own sense of identity, establish social connections through community, and provides us with love, attention, security, and purpose. Perhaps more importantly, a lack of belonging is when we begin to lose sense of ourselves and who we are. This loss of touch with who we are when the world around us suddenly disappears... this slight loss of footing, dip in reality, always feeling somewhat displaced and perpetually unsettled... this encapsulates the mood of Ari Aster's Midsommar.

Aster has delivered a psychedelic genre-defying horror fable that wins its audience by creeping into our darkest corners of angst, longing, and loneliness. At its core, the film is about a young woman who copes with crippling anxiety rooted in a desperate and fearful need for love as she comes to terms with the end of a relationship. It's about anxiety, fear of abandonment, and moving on. It is a meditation on human belonging; an operatic catharsis played on the strings of emotional dependency; a journey both inward and outward, to finally let go of something that was never meant to be.

Midsommar is not a mystery or suspense movie. It unveils itself unapologetically, as if the filmmaker has no intention of hiding anything from us in the first place (the entire movie is visually depicted almost constantly in the background on walls or tapestries). Yet the film establishes its own rhythm and pacing. As the characters embark on a mushroom trip and grow weightless and spacey, so do we get entranced by the beautiful Swedish settings and sounds--at times indistinguishable from flutes being played by characters on-screen, and at other times, woven with a spell-binding aural hypnosis (listen to "Attestupan" without falling into a meditative trip).

Like Hereditary before it, the casting is exceptional. Florence Pugh portrays and embodies isolation and anxiety so effectively that the ideas feel nearly concrete. Her part as Dani demands an incredible range and her commitment to the role is apparent. Her character has an air of desperation to her. A perfect casting for a lonely soul. Jack Reynor, a critical piece to this opera as the unlikeable and detached boyfriend, also delivers in a solid performance that leaves us conflicted, or at the very least, challenged.

If Satan and Cannibal Corpse got together to shoot Blue Valentine in Sweden, I'd imagine it would be something like Midsommar. Aster taps into a dark and vulnerable place--he opens the door to chests you may have locked away and have had no intention of coming back to. If you've gone through a break-up recently, it may resonate even stronger. It's uncomfortable, unpleasant, but ultimately, cathartic.

The director goes on to describe the film as almost a perverse wish-fulfillment fantasy. You see what you want to see. The inclusion of this overarching idea bears a universal relevance to how we can behave in the midst of the most toxic relationships. Entering the ethereal fog of Hårga perhaps a metaphor for willfully indulging in our clouded judgment to escape our fears.

If Hereditary was a thematic exploration of inescapable fate, Midsommar is a tighter, more centered thematic reflection on emotional dependence. The thought given to the characters and script and the details within the various shots, symbols, and sounds will all surely leave many viewers coming back for more.

Plan to watch it twice, if for nothing else, to drink the tea again.

Gorgeous visuals, creative cinematography and solid performances but the movie feels long winded and disconnected. The characters are underdeveloped and the plot is a little all over the place. The movie does however manage to be intentionally funny at times but not scary or very disturbing.