Midsommar

Is it a horror film or is it not a horror film? The short answer is yes and it is damn good. For the long answer, we must first define what a horror film is. Horror movies are not made up of scares (the best ones do not have any at all) or the supernatural (a full range of great horror movies get by without it), and even gory scenes are not unconditionally necessary (as Poltergeist shows). When we come to the full essence, we reach two parallel paths, where one follows the effects on the audience and the other the internal principles of storytelling. On the first path, together with the greats of film criticism and theory, we find that horror is a genre that evokes intense responses in viewers in accordance with the depicted scenes. Linda Williams’s legendary essay likens horror to porn and melodrama, where viewers also observe certain situations that are supposed to elicit their directly proportionate physical response in relation to a given bodily fluid (blood, semen, tears). On the other path into the inner workings of horror stories, we can get to the very essence of horror, which consists in the fact that certain elements penetrate the characters’ inner or outer world, disrupting their deep-rooted values and certainties, which suddenly cease to be valid and the characters have to come to terms with that. The intrusive element may be a serial killer who turns a peaceful suburb into a nightmare or ghosts who turn the characters’ home into a place of life-threatening danger. Besides all manner of classic horror movies, both of these stripped-down definitions can also apply to films that are otherwise assigned to absolutely different categories, from brilliantly disturbing thrillers such as The Hitcher to Ingmar Bergman’s agonising psychological dramas, particularly Persona and Cries and Whispers. Ari Aster took a similar path, whereupon he shot one of the most physically intense and most suggestive horror films of recent years, which thoroughly disturbs the audience by confronting it with a world where completely different values apply and where the most frightening thing happens in broad daylight and inside the main character. Furthermore, Midsommar has phenomenal camera work and dramaturgy, reinforcing the concise vision. After Jordan Peel, we have another significantly distinctive talent who shows us that horror does not have a single universal form, but can rather be a space for original creative realisation. (07/28/2019)

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)

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)

A convincing example that goosebumps can appear on a viewer even watching a film that takes place mostly during the day. Ari Aster has all the hints or mythological connections thoroughly thought out, symbolism plays a leading role, and Florence Pugh is perfectly persuasive in intertwining her civilian life with mental difficulties. However, this Midsommar lasts disproportionately long, the few twists, though suggestive and disturbing, can be seen from miles away – and then there's the last half hour. Specific, striking, unique, but above all, overdone. I've been thinking about it for quite a while, but I still can't take it seriously. I understand what and why is happening during the rituals, but a figurative boundary is crossed with every moan from the group. (06/17/2021)

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)