“Midsommar” Review by Stephanie Chapman (SPOILERS)
July 14, 2019 10:19 am |
**SPOILERS**
Florence Pugh stars as “Dani” a young woman who experiences an unimaginable family tragedy. Dani, her boyfriend “Christian” (played by Jack Reynor) and his 3 friends take a trip to Sweden for a festival. With her recent loss still looming, Dani hopes this trip will provide some much needed respite. However, this festival quickly becomes too much for them all to handle. Hallucinogenic drugs and cult rituals pull them all out of their element when other guests of the festival begin to go missing. This leaves the audience wondering if the events are part of the festival or if there is real danger looming.
Written and directed by Ari Aster, this film is shot beautifully. However, complex issues such as PTSD, grief and co-dependent relationships are complex. Providing surface space for these issues to be experienced by the audience on screen while trivializing them with 90-second shots of mutilated faces simply for shock value seems cheap. Much care was given to portraying cult rituals in a way that peaks the audience’s interest all while providing them with gratuitous shots of everything from suicide to ritualistic sex.
Dani is reduced to the role of a woman who is so concerned with keeping her boyfriend she conforms to his will and apologizes to him for his shortcomings. Giving her the final say in his death at the end is not the arc her character deserves and doesn’t feel earned or appropriate.
The main cast is rounded out by Christian’s 3 equally cringe worthy friends Pelle (played by Vilhelm Blomgren), Josh (played by William Jackson Harper) and Mark (played by Will Poulter). These friends seem to represent what can only be described as the forgotten deadly sins; entitled, arrogant and cunningly manipulative. Although some of them experience somewhat satisfying deaths in the end, their characters are not developed enough for those deaths to make an impact. That is unfortunate because a change in the pacing could have been repurposed to provide those characters with more depth.
“Midsommar” is clever, but attempts to tackle too many serious topics while giving the audience a memorable horror experience (and I cannot be sure it is even providing good horror). All while struggling with pacing that made it drag in parts and feel rushed in others. In an age where horror is less about jump scares and more about making the audience think, it is important that the message being delivered isn’t simply checking boxes, but is diving into the bigger questions of “why”. This film makes an honorable attempt but falls short (no pun intended).
PCL Rating: Low Taste It
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: ROTTEN
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Tags: Ari Aster, Midsommar 2019, Midsommar Movie Review, pop culture leftovers
Categorised in: Movie Reviews
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