Review of Midsommar (2019) by Brettrosey — 04 Jul 2019

I mean, at what point in a film are you simply unable to look past the abundance of C- horror movie decisions? It's a beautifully shot film, with an intriguing story line, but the positive elements get completely overshadowed by the fact that red flags are presented to each of the characters early on into the film, and yet they choose to continue on as if everything's cool.

And we're supposed to believe that because there's tension within the group? It just doesn't cut it. I mean, seriously -- your friends go missing for 24 hours, following one of the characters witnessing the girl whose fiance left her out of nowhere running and screaming for her life.

While some random dude interjects and is just like, "If I may, there was a misunderstanding and I drove her to the station myself." And then Christian is missing his friends, sees his girlfriend hoisted up like a God, is all alone and is like, "Screw it, I'm so vulnerable right now I might as well drink this random concoction and trip my balls off while this freaky redhead tries to take advantage of me.

" And Dani is so drugged up at the end that she concludes Christian's actions of cheating on her, clearly performed under complete duress, warrant his execution by immolation? Yeah, I get it, she was the perfect candidate with the loss of her family.

But shock value with Ari Aster can only get you so far. I saw it with Hereditary's limitations, and it was front and center again in Midsommar. Slow paced scenes of brutal depictions of death isn't always artsy, sometimes it just looks as an attempt to make up for a more profound effort at creating an unsettling vibe.

Anyway, Aster clearly watched The Witch right before getting to work on this one, because you could have seen this plot play out from a mile away. I'm hopeful that he doesn't keep recycling old material involving vivid scenes of brutality and people staring for inordinate amounts of time in shock.