Review of Midsommar (2019) by Jluis_001 — 21 Sep 2019

There's a latent problem in Midsommar. A serious problem in my point of view and is that despite its ambition and enormous pretention, Midsommar is a film unable to provoke and I say that that's a problem because that's precisely what it tries to achieve.

Nowadays there's a new wave of horror separated from the most basic and commercial aspect of it. In many occasions some great stuff comes out of it and on other occasions is just what you would call ''artistic garbage'' Midsommar walks between both sides of that spectrum and it's surprising to say so but there's no point or catalyst that makes you believe there's something more relevant about what you're seeing.

Once you analyze what you saw if you compare it with what it's supposed to be trying to say, well that's where the huge imbalance appears.

You could say it shouldn't be taken so seriously. After all, the purest essence of the film deals with a bad relantionship and the urges of breaking up but that's also a great inconvenience because that's what makes you wonder, what is it all about?

And above all, and I can't say how much I should emphasize this, what the hell happened to the atmosphere?

What Aster achieved in Hereditary completely vanishes here and everything is due to its own environment.

Yes the commune is strange and bizarre. Their customs are disturbing and brutal and violent and you're experiencing those oddities like the main characters. You also feel like and outsider and a foreigner but you have an extra knowledge: You know that something bad will happen and therefore what you have left is simply to wait for it, therefore all the suspense goes out the window and the only thing that Midsommar has left is not what it can still try to build but to at least try to get you interested in knowing where it will eventually lead to.

And getting to the ending, understanding that like the commune, Dani purges her own evil by condemning her boyfriend to death, the void that remains is enormous given the little satisfaction the story provided me. And so it's inevitable to ask why it lasted so long.

With 147 minutes, Midsommar over-extends its stay, consequently I cannot think what can be added with the director's cut, which I will inevitably end up seeing but consider my emotion and interest considerably diminished.