Midsommar (2019)

Directed by Ari Aster

I truly do not know if I can handle another one of this man's films. My close family and friends know that I'm a horror junkie but Mr. Aster's Hereditary of last year managed to disturb me in a way that most horror movies never do. Hereditary has made it's way to one of mu favorite horror movies of all times, along with being my current Autistic obsession (yes, I've made fan art.) Hereditary still does disturb me when I watch it, but it's mainly one particular scene so I can leave the room when it happens or cover my ears.

Midsommar makes Hereditary look like a children's play. I took 2 friends to go see Hereditary, but I never want to see Midsommar ever again. Or at the very least, you'd have to pay me a lot of money. I'd say Midsommar is probably more disturbing than Hereditary, though I still think Hereditary is the better film (more on that later).

This review has a new format and a block text to hide spoilers! Hoping it works, to view spoilers just highlight the text.

The style is probably what stands out the most about this movie, as it's noticeable in the trailers that bright colors abound and majority of the film takes place in broad daylight. This is rare for a horror movie to do on it's own, but Midsommar takes it up even more with constant visuals of nice flowers and grassy fields. The movie itself however starts off in darker tones, setting the feeling of dread far before our characters get to Sweden. There's also some really interest "trip" scenes when our characters take drugs which was pretty different for me.

For the sound and music, I don't remember much aside from the chanting in the beginning and other major scenes. I fully blame this on the fact that I was aware of my heartbeat in my chest throughout the entire movie. (Did I burn calories watching this? I hope so.) I do remember there being scenes where there was no background audio which only added to how unsettling things were. 

The writing of this movie, while good, is still where I feel it lacks compared to Hereditary. The only character I cared about was our main lead Dani who I very much sympathized with. But this might have been the issue. Dani's boyfriend Christian is "meh" at best, and his friends are utter assholes, to the point where looked forward to their deaths. The Swedish friend appears nice but of course he's in on the whole thing.

Hereditary was more impactful I feel, because I cared about Charlie and Peter. I cared about Steve. Heck, I even cared about Annie, even though she wasn't the greatest mother. The difference is hard for me to explain fully, because everything that happened to Dani was still a punch to my gut. I also feel that Midsommar was a bit too long. Hereditary would have greatly benefited from having a few of their deleted scenes in the film, but Midsommar is a bit of the opposite.

As for parallels to Hereditary, yes there are a few. Obviously, both are about cults, however grief is still a major theme. Both main characters are broken down mentally and go through trauma, and both receive a title of king/queen.

The ol' lying awake while traumatized stare.

As for the scares....can you say disturbing? The murder-suicide by Dani's sister, in which she kills her parents via carbon monoxide contraption was probably the most hard hitting for me. I feel it's made even worse by the phone conversation in the beginning, as Dani's fear is brushed off with "she's just looking for attention again" It shows the real lack of understand of mental illnesses in our world today and it made me think of the recent suicide of YouTuber Etika, where no one really took his posts seriously and many assumed he was doing a publicity stunt. There's gore in this movie, and it's pretty ok, though I still think Charlie's is a little more disturbing, but possibly just because of the fact that she's a child. This review is getting lengthy so I'll just leave with a few more things that disturbed me. The love potion which I fully consider rape (yes, men can be raped), The "mating" scene (just...no), the fact Dani has no idea and then those cult members copying her sobbing in a chant (do I laugh or cry?), and the bear costume was pretty WTF as well.

Overall, this succeeded in scaring the crap out of me, but it is a long movie.