Most
movies in general tend to follow the simplest rules possible when it
comes to plotting, characters, villains and pacing and, sadly, horror
movies are no different. Be honest, when was the last time you
watched a movie under the Horror banner anywhere and didn't go in
expecting the bare minimum? Stupid people are going to do something
stupid and encounter something evil/crazy/homicidal that will
promptly show them the error of their ways via gruesome and, usually,
over-the-top ends which previously mentioned stupid people won't
actually learn from because they'll likely be dead by the end of said
lesson. While this particular series of events is the basic bones of
the genre trope for obvious reasons (its cheap and easy to pull off
and requires zero creative input) it also tends to drag the entire
genre down into the gutter of predictable plots and people too stupid
to recreate. Enter Ari Aster: a man of both cinematic vision and
original thought in a genre that doesn't seem to require it.
Before
you ask, no, Midsommar is not your typical, mass consumption horror
movie with some silly and predictable moral about clean living or
else. The characters have depth, the monsters are, at times, far more
human than the surprisingly large cast of protagonists, the setting
is both beautifully rendered and ominously creepy and the
psychological deconstruction of Dani (Florence Pugh) might be the
only evil thing I've ever rooted for in a movie ever. Throw in a
beautiful score than compliments the steadily deteriorating psyche of
its characters and an almost personal argument about toxic
relationships and how they can lead to true destruction and you even
have something not seen in a horror film since...well, since Aster's
last movie Hereditary. Hey, the guy's keeping the quality up, at
least!
Unfortunately,
like most cinema that breaks the mold, this obviously isn't for
everyone or even the seemingly niche audience horror movie tend to
create. In order to create a sense of alienation between the audience
and the film, nearly half the dialog is entirely in Swedish with, at
best, dotted subtitles and, also due to the director wanting the
audience to feel his characters' pain, the film features numerous
sequences revolving around intense mental anguish that was hard to
watch even for someone incapable of being offended like myself. It
felt like a movie you should be ashamed of watching and it still
managed to resonate as both a deeply personal argument about mundane
subjects and how not facing them can lead to destructive decisions
and consequences. It was a horror movie about humanity that had me
actively rooting against people. How did they do that?
As for
watching it, good luck with that decision. This isn't a typical
slasher or haunted house movie with simplistic black and white
arguments about virtues or sins and, honestly, that will likely
inhibit most people from wanting to even give it a chance to prove
its worth. Do you seek out a vague answer to a “happy” ending
where maybe, just maybe, the bad guys might have a point and the good
guys might be the problem? This will probably make you think too much
about that. Just try to avoid the urge to bleach your brain
afterwards. That doesn't end well.
Ari
Aster (Hereditary) continues to find the horrific in the mundane with
Midsommar, a “folk horror” story about how a toxic, one-sided
relationship and the desperate, nearly psychotic, need for something
more can lead to really bad things in the loosest terms of the word
“bad”. Having lost her entire family in a murder-suicide and
stuck in a loveless relationship with a distant, uncaring boyfriend,
Dani (Pugh) decides to guilt her worthless boyfriend Christian into
allowing her to tag along on his “guy's trip” to northern Sweden
for Midsommar, a once-in-90-years festival centered around a
cult-like group called the Hargas. What follows is a steadily more
ominous series of events culminating in Dani finally standing up for
herself in ways that are both uplifting and disturbing (much more on
the disturbing side). I've seen worse movies about Swedish death
cults (okay, I've actually seen zero).
My
score: 8/10. I will never look at meat pies the same way again. Well,
I've always looked at them as disgusting pastries that seem to lack
the basic requirements for either terms in their names, but now I'll
probably only see them as, well, THAT.
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