Midsommar is NUTS, but Way Too Long
When Midsommar starts with the murder-suicide of Dani Ardor (Florence Pugh)’s family via carbon monoxide poisoning, this is the first warning that Ari Aster’s film won’t be an easy watch. Due to her recent tragedy, Ardor gets invited by her distant boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), to observe Midsummer traditions in a traditional Pagan village in Sweden. They soon learn that those “traditions” are incredibly fucked-up and ethically wrong, and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren)’s family (the student that invited Christian, Dany and other friends to Sweden) are not who they seem.
Midsommar’s familiar structure soon breaks when the group witnesses a traditional ritual of Ättestupa, where the elders who reached 72 years of age commit suicide by jumping off a cliff and falling on a rock. The scene is incredibly graphic — with the emotional build-up of violence being increfibly raw once the couple fall off the cliff. The face being squished on the rock and/or the legs being squished by the fall. The most shocking moment, however, is when one of the elders gets his face squished by a hammer and the family replies that it’s OK — because it’s traditional. I love how the family reacts to how normal everything is — even if the gullible americans who believe it’s going to be a good time think that it’s OK to perform all of thse sadistic rituals.
I’ll say this about Florence Pugh — she didn’t really impress me during the film’s first act. She played this incredibly clichéd, and gullible 20-some odd year old girl who can’t seem to understand that her boyfriend doesn’t want anything to do with her. Once she sets foot in Sweden and trips on psilocybin, her performance morphs into something else entirely. Once she bathes in the culture of the Harga and participates deeply in those traditions, including a maypole dance ritual and wins, she becomes the May Queen, and realizes that she deepened in the culture more than all of her friends. The film’s cast, from Pugh to two great supporting performances from Jack Reynor and Will Poulter are all terrific. We’ve seen all of these actors (including Pugh) starring in terrible content, but they all shine here, especially Pugh and Poulter who steal every inch of the frame when they’re on screen.
The movie is a slow-burn, but sometimes, that slow-burn takes way too long to get going. During the film’s climax, I found it to be a tad too long, but the emotional pay-off is immensely satisfying. Running at a hefty runtime of 147 minutes, Midsommar might not be for everyone due to its insanely slow pace and unlikeable characters doing questionnable things. However, its performances are terrific all-around, from its “american” (if you will) characters to the Swedish ones. The film is worth seeing solely due to seeing Florence Pugh slowly descend into madness as the characters she came with (with the exception of Pelle) die one by one. The film’s violence is raw and incredibly graphic, which may disturb some viewers but entertain the shit out of others. The film is worth seeing only due to its Ättestupa scene, which sets the stage for the descent into madness you’ll live after. It’s one of the most original horror movies of 2019 — but not quite its best. That still goes to Doctor Sleep.
✯✯✯✯
