Yeah this movie was pretty weird. Also an odd one to watch with your girlfriend which is what I did.
Midsommar is a 2019 Horror and Thriller directed by Ari Aster about an American couple and their friends who travel to Sweden for a once-in-every 90 years festival, Midsommar. Beginning in America, Midsommar begins with our main character Dani (Florence Pugh) frantically exchanging emails with her bipolar sister worried that she may harm herself. After receiving the call that her sister and parents died from her sister’s Carbon Monoxide suicide which poisoned the entire house, Dani enters a damaging emotional traumatized state seen with her for almost the rest of the plot. Prior to this tragedy, Dani and Christian’s (Jack Reynor) relationship was trending toward an end as Christian discusses breaking up with her early on into the movie. But, with his girlfriend mourning the death of her entire immediate family, Christian has no morally rational choice but to stay with her. In an attempt to heal their relationship’s distrust when Dani learns Christian was initially planning to go to Sweden without her, he invites her on his boys’ trip. The rest of the group reluctantly accepts her coming on the trip and Pelle tells her the trip will be good for her. When the group gets to Hälsingland—the hometown of Pelle—the group takes some type of psychedelics where Mark pressures Dani to take some. During her trip (the psychedelic trip that is), her current emotional state begins to haunt her. The group later settles into the Hälsingland’s main village and the eeriness of Aster’s plot settles in as well. The group of friends are introduced and convinced of the friendliness of Scandinavian paganism. But, it’s on their second day where they watch two elders perform an obscene and graphic ritual where they have to deal with tip toeing the line between what’s culturally relative and what’s dehumanizing and or immoral. What follows is a very passive aggressive escalation of tension between the Hälsingland people and the friend group who have to grapple with the realization that they’ve gotten involved with a cult disguised as a religion.
WARNING FOR SPOILERS. READ AT OWN RISK.
The Pros
This film perfectly entertains through theme and character development. It’s not often I watch a movie and deliver such a strong, literary-like theme. The theme I personally identified was cultural relativism (which I referred to in the plot synopsis). Cultural relativism means the understanding of the differences between your culture and another’s. Obviously, as seen with the London couple the friend group meets when they arrive in the town, there’s a complete vacancy of cultural appreciation for the Ättestupa tradition (By the way… I am not ripping on them for disapproving. I would have totally reacted the same way). Pelle combats the London couple’s view to one of the leaders, explaining that American death practices, or traditional western society practices, may not be looked at as acceptable to the Scandinavian people. This theme gets entangled with Dani and Christian when they start to change and accept—thanks to Stockholm syndrome or voluntarily—the practices and traditions shown to them in Hälsingland. When Dani participates in the May Queen dancing competition, she’s accepted the way of life that she’s been subjected to. Now, the same can’t be said about Christian who has intercourse with the redhead cultist girl because I think he just acted out of lust, but yes, there was still character development in him cheating on his girlfriend and a stride made for affiliation.
The personalities of characters and the presentation of characters. Midsommar has the makeup of a comedy movie’s friend group: (I purposely leave out Pelle because I don’t see him in comedy movies) Starting with the idiot friend who’s hilarious (Mark), the token girl of the group (Dani), slightly nerdy guy (Josh), and the oblivious boyfriend (Christian). Simon is just easily the best character in this movie who was given the best lines and moments. When he pees on the ancestral tree is the golden standard and that whole course of dialogue was some of the best writing this movie showed. His comedy relief is a perfect aside to the eery and intense plot at hand that Midsommar is trying to get at.
The movie revolves around Florence Pugh’s character Dani and her development from the start of the movie to the end of the movie. It’s about how a girl soaked deep in trauma and extremely vulnerable can become part of the environment she grieves in and is completely divergent from her past self. She entered Sweden fragile but open, got introduced to horrific situations, became glorified in the cult, then was left with a smirk (conveying her emotional trauma is healed) with the last frame of the movie.
The Cons
While Midsommar showed me a well thought out and well executed plot, that doesn’t change my opinion on how frankly weird this plot is towards the end. Everything leading up to the intercourse scenes and eventual downfall of Christian was done super well; But, everything starting with the intercourse and after, was one, very hard to watch, and two, a slight tarnishing of my appreciation for the movie. There’s always a con to be said about my Cons so I’ll address the one that says “But for one, it’s a cult so things are going to be weird and two, the plot has to deliver those practices to be relevant to the cult.” Sure, those things should be fulfilled. But for me personally, the movie was doing so well before the weirdness got in the way of appreciation for the beautiful script, characters, and story (before weirdness) that Midsommar deserves.
Despite the weirdness, Midsommar entertains. Isn’t that what a movie is made to do? Usually. Therefore, the score for Midsommar is an 89.