Midsommar

It's like a modern The Witch meets 1973’s The Wicker Man. Midsommar is a concentrated, poetic, psychological horror film, but it doesn't scare simply by shocking and frightening – it scares by its creeping unpredictability, where we know how someone will end up, yet we have no earthly idea what will happen to them or when. Hereditary rather disappointed me, but Aster's second film has already won it for me by a landslide. The opening, in which we get to know the characters and their relationships, is already impeccable, but after the flight to Sweden it's hard to find words to describe the atmosphere that ensues. And how it is filmed! Imaginative camera angles and editing, long and absorbing shots, plus "live" music and one heathen stranger than the other. I look forward to seeing it again – I know exactly what to focus on. (08/02/2019)

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)

No sophomore slump this time. With his second feature film, Ari Aster confirms that in recent years there hasn’t been a more significant directorial breakthrough, at least not in the field of the darker genres. Midsommar’s atmosphere is unique, beautiful in its visuals and exciting in the portrayal of the concept of trauma, which the main character is experiencing. And mainly, it’s incredibly, truly incredibly bizarre. Rather than a second Hereditary, what we have here is some sort of perverted sunny fairy-tale, “The Wizard of Oz” for the weirdos, as Aster himself said in an interview. Why then only 4* (for the moment)? After Aster’s first film, I was probably expecting a more radical twist and a sharper horror ending. Midsommar manages to surprise in several individual moments (many of which were of course in the trailer), but as whole it goes in a fairly expected direction. The ending IS mad, but, once again, in a bizarre rather than horrifying manner. I could get over it, but, the fundamental difference with Hereditary is that this time, at least during the first viewing, I wasn’t able to relate to the character of Dani enough to fully comprehend her final mood. To get the meaning of Midsommer, it is absolutely essential that the relationship between Dani and Christian resonate with the viewer. But I was too enchanted by the pagan bizarreness around to live with the characters the crisis in their relationship. So, I hope that the half hour extended version that’s in the works won’t have much more gore, sex and nastiness, but will get deeper into that central relationship. That would work perfectly for me. (07/25/2019)

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)

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)