Midsommar

It’s like an accident on the side of the road where you drive by and can’t help yourself from looking. You don’t know why you look but you continue to do so, knowing full well that what you may see could be shockingly horrible and at the same time hoping that everything for the most part will be alright for those involved.

That’s kind of like how Midsommar is… and once you watch it there’s no un-watching it.

But is it good?

Well it’s full of shocking horror, gore, insanely uncomfortable buildups leading toward something more even more horrific, mixed in with smiles, soft looking rituals robes and great cinematography.

I’d say it’s a damn good horror flick from up and coming auteur horror director Ari Aster (Hereditary).

The film centers around a college couple, Dani and her boyfriend Christian. Dani suffers from a multitude of disorders including anxiety and after a tragic event that occurs to her family in the opening scene, she is beyond grief stricken.

Her longtime boyfriend, Christian is the one who consoles her, however, it appears he has been wanting out of the relationship for a while but doesn’t have the balls to end it.

You can never really tell if he pities her or if there’s genuine affection there as the two kind of go through the motions of a relationship.

But it appears Christian has found a way to leave by going with his college buddies, Mark and Josh and their new Swedish exchange pal, Pelle, to his country for six weeks with a quick stop to his commune for their midsummer celebration that occurs once every 90 years.

However, upon Dani learning of his decision, Christian still finds it difficult to end it and brings her along much to the dismay of his friends.

The commune is remote, in northern Sweden where the sun only sets for a few hours in the day. Mark references it to “Waco” and yes it does have that cultish feeling mixed in with the isolationism of the Amish for contextual purposes.

The commune produces it’s own food, builds it’s own structures, makes its own clothes and especially takes pride in it’s own rituals. Many of which deal with psychedelic drugs, community gathers and odd customs, many of which are painting on the walls of the houses and structures, which to these curious American travelers was a big selling point.

Observe and document. Experience and view the spectacle with an open mind.

But there’s kind of a liberal nativity to that in many ways, because once shit gets weird and you see people die in the name of ritual, you should probably get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

It’s a 2 hour and 20 minute film which is incredibly long for a horror flick but Aster builds it up quite nicely in the sense of treating the first half of the film more like a documentary into this remote commune’s culture and ways, which is why the lead characters stick around as well. It’s interesting.

And every time something shocking occurs Pelle is there with his soft blue eyes and comforting smile to explain to his foreign friends that this is just a custom, part of who he and his community are. And to his credit, Pelle and his extended family are all very kind, joyful and childlike, nearly pure of outside influences and almost genuine in appearance.

At least up until the point where the interest leads to shock, then horror and all of a sudden you crash into the car ahead of you and now you’re fully apart of this accident whether you want to or not.

Simply put there’s no coming back from Midsommar.