Midsommar --a review

Ari Aster strikes again with Midsommar. The horror auteur, who broadsided us with Hereditary just last year, is back with another in-your-face horror thriller that pulls no punches. Florence Pugh stars a Dani, a young woman who suffers a terrible tragedy early on in the film when her sister kills herself and winds up inadvertently killing their parents in the process. Understandably flailing with grief and misery, Dani seeks comfort in the arms of her manipulative lover, Christian (Jack Reynor), whose relationship with Dani has been suffering some setbacks shortly before receiving the terrible news.

Several months later, Christian and friends receive an invitation to visit Sweden by Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who lives there in a commune. One is tempted to describe the people who live in this commune as being a cult, but Aster effectively masks this suspicion on the part of his characters (who wisely suspect it at the very beginning) by having them trying to be politically correct in their attempts to be as understanding of other people’s cultures as they possibly can. One of Christian’s friends, Josh (William Jackson Harper), is even writing a paper on religious rituals across Europe, and he sees this exposure to this strange group and their odd ways as being a major plus.

Just like in Hereditary, the dread slowly builds in Midsommar until it reaches to a boiling point of terror. Florence Pugh is fantastic as the wounded bird who’s desperately seeking a new family, and Jack Raynor is just as good as the self-serving Christian--whose character’s name is a very interesting choice, considering the battle of wills that follows with a decidedly un-Christian cult that turns out to be just as manipulative as he is in getting what they want. When the true terror starts in Midsommar, it is unflinchingly horrific, and graphically gory. And the fact that it’s still so effective while all taking place in the unblinking sunlight of midsummer is even more impressive.

Ari Aster masterfully shows that, in order to make a superior horror film, in order to properly shock and terrorize the audience, the filmmakers have to make you care for the characters, first. And Midsommar does that magnificently. The acting, the writing, and the direction is all brilliantly done here, creating a new masterpiece of the horror genre that's in the same league as the original The Wicker Man. Midsommar manages to be unnervingly scary all while still imparting a message about the dangers of social mores, as well as the dangers of trading one toxic relationship for another. If you’re a hard core horror fan, give it a shot. --SF

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