Midsommar (2019)
R 2h 28m
Dir / Writer: Ari Aster
Starring: Florence Pugh; Jack Reynor; Vilhelm Blomgren
by Paul Bernardo @paulieb2003@gmail.com
This is a release from A24, or was a release from A24, the distribution company everyone is talking about since Uncut Gems was such a big hit.
Ari Aster did a horror film for A24 before, called Hereditary in 2018. Now I know you’re saying, Hey Paul, why on Earth did you see this film and why on Earth are even writing about it. Good question. Since seeing Saltburn, this movie has come up in every discussion I’ve had since. “Oh you should see Midsummar then”, they all told me. So I did.
Let me first say this is a very cheaply done film. I mean cheaply done. I mean most of it is shot outdoors in a field somewhere. They even eat at a dinner table outdoors, that’s how cheap it is. There are barns that serve as locations, but really nothing adorns the walls or even has furniture. I’m talking cheap.
So it’s about this couple that we think are having problems, we don’t know because the writing is so bad. I think they have a spat or an argument. Again, hard to tell. Their mutual male friend is going back home to Sweden to take
part in a festival of some kind, which none of them understand or know what it is. Some of the other male friends want to go and book a ticket. Then the boyfriend is like, “hey, I bought a ticket to Sweden too” and the girl is like “what?”. So that’s how that happens.
They all go to this very weird festival where you think strange things are gonna happen, but really it is very tame. Nothing too scary, nothing horrific or taboo. It’s tame, relaxed yet odd. Saltburn was way more disturbing than this film.
Florence doesn’t really have much to do here, she gets drugged and stays in a daze for the movie. Don’t worry though, nothing ever happens to her, she just walks around as if she were high.
For a strange secretive festival, nothing really happens – there is the inevitable sex scene in the end, but we all saw that coming, and is probably why most people agreed to watch it in the first place.
It’s a ho-hum movie with bad acting and a very cheap budget. No thrills, no fun, no humor, no horror, no gore. Very average, and the plot and the writer didn’t go far enough to make this interesting or worth the viewing.
I mean, if you’re going to have a secret annual festival – why not go all the way and push that button? I know I wanted to push the stop button while watching it.
