Midsommar is a folk horror movie directed by Ari Aster and starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Isabelle Grill, and a lot of Swedish people.
Dani (Pugh) gets the news that her sister Terri (Klaudia Csányi) has killed herself and their parents via carbon monoxide poisoning. (Cue Hugh Laurie: "Not a comedy, then.") Her relationship with her boyfriend Christian (Reynor) was kind of rocky anyway, but once that happens of course he's not going to leave her, so the relationship limps along for a few months. And then Christian's Swedish friend Pelle (Blomgren) invites him, fellow sociology student Josh (Harper) and their other roommate/pal Mark (Poulter) to Sweden for the midsummer festival at the commune where Pelle grew up. Christian invites Dani in one of the most gutless scenes I've ever seen, and off they go!
Well, turns out this "commune" is more of a "cult." They all wear handmade white clothes, it's out in the middle of Swedish nowhere, they freely dole out mind-altering substances to keep everyone off their pins, and everything goes more or less OK (if strange) until the first day where two old folks jump off a cliff to their messy deaths. Circle of life, you see, everything is done in seasons. When winter is up, you're 72, you take the plunge, as it were.
The obvious thing to do at this point would be to fucking leave, which is what the other two outsiders, British tourists Connie (Torchia) and Simon (Madekwe) brought by another cult recruiter (Hampus Hallberg), try to do. But Christian and Josh are too into this whole thing as a sociological subject, and Mark didn't see the deaths and is kind of an idiot anyway. This all just keeps progressing until by the end, only Dani and Christian and left alive, and he gets stuff into a bear carcass and burned.
This movie is fucked up, is what I'm saying.
But I actually found that the movie has a lot of thematic depth. We could look at how it portrays grief, death, community, relationships, even gender roles, and all of that is worth discussing. From a horror movie perspective, there are some really effective moments. I think my favorite might be after Connie goes stomping off to try and find Simon (she's told he left without her; actually he's been turned into a blood eagle because this cult does not fuck around), we hear faint screams in the distance and see the characters react, but it's never quite loud enough to identify or pinpoint.
I like that the movie doesn't get cute about the cult being sinister. If you know anything at all about folk horror or have ever seen The Wicker Man, you know what's coming from the moment you see the cultists frolicking in the grass. But that frees us up to enjoy the particulars of the cult, to note all the foreshadowing in the murals and artwork around the commune, and to take note of Chekov's Bear in its cage.
Florence Pugh gives us a great performance, but I have to say I loved Jack Reynor, too, because he plays such an amazing spineless twatwaffle. William Jackson Harper is awesome as usual, Will Poulter is good as the dude out for a good time with his buds suddenly thrust into a totally unfamiliar situation, and Vilhelm Blomgren comes off as a love-bombing cultist perfectly.
I'd been meaning to watch this movie for a long time, I just never got around to it. Now that I have, I definitely want to see Hereditary (same director). Aster's movies are not light, however, so I might need a breather.
My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-low
Next up: Now You See Me 2
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