Midsommar

There are only a few horror genre directors worth buying a movie ticket for, and Ari Aster convinced me with his debut last year that he belongs to this select group. While watching Hereditary, I had the impression that the director gradually went astray and the result did not correspond to the possibilities, but with his second attempt, he hit the bullseye. Ari created an incredibly polished genre film that, in my opinion, will deeply divide not only the audience but also the critics. It is a film that goes against genre conventions and fan expectations. Do not expect typical jump scares, dynamic editing, sudden camera movements, ghosts, and blood splatters everywhere you look. For the average viewer, Midsommar will probably be too slow and frustratingly ineffective. Others, on the other hand, will encounter emotional barriers. Midsommar goes against audience expectations and needs, and it will unpleasantly attack your psyche. Aster questions the ethical norms derived from Christianity and enlightenment, returning us to the time of pagan cults, shamanism, and mysticism. He turns our value system upside down and shows us people willing to die voluntarily, as well as kill others without remorse because earthly existence is just a preparation for the afterlife, where death signifies mere metamorphosis into a higher sphere. Similarly, the depiction of the sexual act is unpleasant and significantly contrasts with current film trends. The director tests our limits of emotional endurance. He plays with open cards, he is predictable, but at the same time, he builds his game with the viewer. Carefully, he strains us with how far we are willing to go. Aster's direction primarily works with contrasts. The color white is usually a symbol of innocence, but here it evokes an evil premonition. The sun, a symbol of life, brings only ruin. Pleasing scenes hide horrifying content. Aster works his magic with the camera and skillfully mixes music, just like Lynch used to do. He relies on an unknown but flawlessly functioning cast, of which Florence Pugh, above all, will likely become a rising star of the film scene. The result is a film that pushes the boundaries of the genre. Surprisingly, no one thought to explore this highly interesting sphere, except for Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (which lacks filmmaking precision). Overall impression: 90%. (08/02/2019)

Midsommar is a film that will best serve people who are seeking inspiration for a very spectacular way to break up. Aster again lags behind his own ambitions. Midsommar ostentatiously gives the impression that it wants to be an essential contribution to the horror genre. However, the long runtime, slowness and seriousness emanating from the grandiose filming of everyday scenes (camera crane FTW!) and the coldly methodical, mechanically timed editing do not guarantee great depth of thought or psychology (the comparison with Bergman, who did not pretend to be enigmatic, is laughable). When you shoot a psychological horror movie and let the actors ham it up and the characters behave like idiots who do not mind the fact that people are disappearing around them, you pull the rug out from under yourself. In the final third of the film, it is as if Aster is so attached to his effort to build tension that he completely forgets to develop the banal, straightforwardly told story and to concern himself with whether the characters’ actions are consistent. Though noteworthy from an anthropological point of view and nourishing for interpretive adventurers, the attempt to pound into our head with every shot the fact that something scary is about to happen (which is paradoxically less effective than subtler hints would be) and that we are watching a tremendously sophisticated horror film becomes increasingly annoying as the minutes drag by. I could much better imagine Midsommar as a musical comedy (it is actually not far from being just that, though not intentionally) about a group of doped-up flower children singing and dancing in a meadow, wearing animal costumes and familiarising themselves with a foreign culture and cuisine, including, among other things, meat pie with baked female pubic hair. Ari Aster is not a bad director and he knows how to create a dense atmosphere in individual scenes. He would just be better served by considering what is enough. 70% (07/25/2019)

Ari Aster and Jordan Peele are the John Carpenter and David Cronenberg of the 21st Century without question! Midsommar is one of those controversial horror films that isn't very rewarding to viewers and will only please the more discerning and, above all, patient ones, who will, however, be solidly rewarded. The biggest downside is the slower pace (almost nothing interesting happens for the first hour), but from the first "ceremony" the film starts to get more and more interesting and above all disturbing. The whole mythology of the Swedish pagan community is interesting enough, novel and very unpredictable. A big plus is Florence Pugh, who gives a breathtaking performance (definitely the most talented young actress of our time), the music is also perfect, very unconventional for a horror film, but fits perfectly here. There is also very creative cinematography and the absolute biggest attraction is of course the gore, which Ari Aster serves up in such a shocking way that weaker viewers will prefer to give up and leave the film. The ending is typically symbolic and incredibly morbid (I've never seen anything weirder). Slow, creepy, disturbing, shocking, unorthodox and powerfully controversial is what Midsommar is. I liked Hereditary a bit more, but this is also a gem. PS: Those teens that go to the cinema cinema just because they see the horror genre and want to jump out of their seats, they must have been very surprised at what they actually got. 80% (07/09/2019)

Horror subgenres are bound by traditions, and this applies to “folklore horror" even more. It can’t surprise anyone, if we are talking about a movie that is centred around following and respecting traditions, right? Maybe that's why not many filmmakers are eager to make something like this. Because dealing with the fact that the viewer will know “where the movie is going" is certainly not easy. You will not only know it, but you will expect it and maybe even require it. What's worse, you get into a position where you reluctantly expose your work to the  pedestal of cult classics with The Wicker Man at the top. Nevertheless, several good films in this vein have appeared in recent years. Aster's Midsommar is the best of them (although it is paradoxically closer to the new Suspiria than the original The Wicker Man (1973). After all, as with all the best horror movies, “scaring/disturbing" is just a means of looking at ordinary problems. So Midsommar is primarily a chilling psychological study of a dysfunctional relationship/breakup, and what goes hand in hand with that is the fact that this study is disturbing, unpleasant, magnificently shot, enriched with some gore effect and performed in a riveting way. (09/08/2019)

A long-overdue stay in the village of Harga ... and what can I say? It’s great! The best couples therapy / horror about the ultimate evil and a relationship destroyer called a thesis. I've seen a lot of ambitious US horror movies in recent years that were inadvertently funny. What at first glance seems to affect the viewer's psyche as an extract from psychotropic, or perhaps even poisonous mushrooms, in fact resembles, after watching the film, the unpleasant come-down after smoking an excessive amount of marijuana cigarettes, which contain more twigs and other unpleasant ingredients. The film combines ridicule of practices that are common in sects and a bizarrely-constructed drama with the theme of toxic relationships. It works like a anthropological study written in the manic phase. In a year from now, our entire family is going to be dead. Along with Get Out, it’s the peak of the wave of indie horror films. Bye - Ari Zoroaster aka Josef Midsommar. (11/21/2019)