Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place wher...
WHAT I LIKED: Ari Aster's 'Midsommar,' opens with some of the best character introductions you could possibly imagine. We see a young woman called Dani (Florence Pugh) struggling with her sister's mental health problems, her boyfriend playing everything down and his friends urging him to think of himself, and then her heart-wrenching grief as her sister takes her own life. At a party, she then decides to join her boyfriend and his friends on a trip to a Swedish folk festival, largely, you suspect, out of a fear of being left alone, and these being the only people she has to latch onto.
You know immediately however that all hell is going to break loose there, as, even without any knowledge of the premise, Aster uses strange panning, watching camera angles and creepy music to build a sense of unease. When they arrive in the isolated community, we see various strange paintings and buildings, miniature customs happening without explanation, and the locals encouraging the use of hallucinagenic drugs.
Like in 'Hereditary,' this is Aster playing with the tension of both the unknown and the inevitable, but (very unlike in 'Hereditary') you're not kept guessing as to what's going on for long as, when two old folk are forced to jump off a cliff and members of the group start going "missing," you quickly realise that these Swedish folks are just evil, barbaric murderers. Then it just becomes about what sticky end is going to befall each of Dani's group, and what keeps you vaguely invested is that you somewhat care about her, not least because the character is so lost and in need of a home, but also because Pugh's performance of that longing is so great.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Because we so quickly learn how twisted the community is and tension only comes from the inevitable deaths of the young friends, it soon becomes monotonous and even laughable to sit through their endless engagement in the strange rituals and ceremonies.
As things get weirder and weirder and more and more dragged out, you'll sit there longing to find some deeper meaning behind it all or some semblance of a character arc to fill the void created by the lack of atmosphere or tension. Sadly, perhaps apart from the final shot of Dani's face, neither is anywhere to be seen, and the result is a film that leaves you feeling completely hollow, if slightly entranced by the weirdness.
VERDICT: Ari Aster's 'Midsommar,' quickly drops any mystery and descends into two hours of strange folk rituals that do almost nothing to develop characters or themes.
