Midsommar

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dws1982
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Re: Midsommar

Post by dws1982 »

I will say Hereditary is a much more conventional horror film than this--it at least had a few traditional jump scenes, even in the first three-quarters that I mostly liked. But the demonic stuff that he really doubled down on at the end, which was way too arcane and obscure and convoluted to make any sense, is the type of stuff that Aster goes all in on in Midsommar--it's obscure pagan cultural rituals here, but it's just another side of the same coin essentially. I really don't see what other people are loving about this, beyond a general respect the balls it took for Aster to convince A24 to give him the money for it. I can respect audacity too, but that doesn't always lead to a good movie.

I will say that I'm surprised that this got a C+ on Cinemascore. I wonder if this is a benefit of opening mid-week, and right up against a national holiday? I feel like the type of audience filling out those cards last night was very different than the type who go to a movie and fills them out on a regular Friday.
Mister Tee
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Re: Midsommar

Post by Mister Tee »

Thanks for warning me off this. I had, I guess, a similar reaction to Hereditary: enjoyed the ins and outs of it, until it turned into a full-on demonic horror movie. I've also been avoiding Us, since people keep telling me the best part is it's so much scarier than Get Out. Since what I enjoyed about Get Out was the social satire underlying the suspense -- and what I didn't care for was the blood-letting/bludgeoning -- this did not amount to a recommendation.

This risks putting me firmly in old-fart corral, but I fear we've come to the point where generations of marinating in horror and super-hero genre films have created a cadre of film critics who expect nothing more from films than what used to be viewed as the junk genres, and, for the rest of my life, they're going to be trying to sell me on such films by claiming they're high art.
dws1982
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Midsommar

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******SPOILERS, I GUESS******
I guess this is worth a spoiler warning, but I'm not really sure what I'd be spoiling. As I texted a friend, "if you saw Hereditary and wished the whole movie was like the last fifteen minutes, boy is this the movie for you". Given that I mostly liked Hereditary until it took that left turn, you won't be surprised to know that I disliked Midsommar quite a bit.

Releasing this wide on 4th of July weekend opposite Spider-Man is definitely a choice, given that this is the kind of movie that exists for people to post reviews on Letterboxd consisting of nothing more than "Crazy shit huh?" or "Lol WTF?" or "?????" and then get a couple hundred likes for doing so. I honestly think A24 would've been better off (or no worse off) putting Under the Silver Lake out wide this weekend: Sell it as something it isn't to get a decent opening weekend, then back away when the inevitable F Cinemascore rating comes in.

Quick plot description: After experiencing a serious trauma, college student Dani goes with her boyfriend Christian and his friends to a traditional midsummer festival in northern Sweden. The friends are anthropology students and there, at least partially, for research purposes.

The opening scenes establish what looks like an interesting look at grief and trauma--clearly a subject of interest and resonance to Ari Aster--and even the earliest scenes at the midsummer festival seem like it's going to continue in that vein. But that's basically the first thirty minutes, and this movies goes on for two more hours. I'm not really sure what to make of the rest of it. I'm sure some will claim to have seen something profound in it--maybe as a metaphor for trauma (which most horror is) or a commentary about social structures--but it's basically two unbearable hours of pagan cult rituals mixed in with random Lynchian weirdness.

But here's the thing: Lynch, even at his most Lynchian, often has scenes and sequences that have a great deal of emotional resonance. I didn't care for Inland Empire overall, but there was one hugely affecting scene that I still think about, over 12 years later, even though I can't recall many specific details of the scene. He's able to hit on things that resonate and stick with you, even in films that might send you running for the hills otherwise, and I think that's because his films are often very emotional. Compare that to Aster, whose Lynchian weirdness here is accompanied by a Kubrick-like detachment. So the weirdness just feels like weirdness for its own sake, and to its own end. Nothing has any real resonance, and even a good score, strong cinematography, and strong work from the cast all feels like it's in service of nothing.

This actually does get into SPOILER territory:
The thing that is really not sitting well with me is the fact that Christian is raped by the women in this film. I'm not bothered by the fact of a film portraying a rape, but I am very much bothered by the fact that nothing in the text of the scene--or in what follows--treats it as such, and it even portrays him as somewhere between "partially to blame" and "asking for it", and I think the ending confirms that he probably deserved whatever he got. It's gross, and if you reverse the genders on that scene, there's no way it plays as anything BUT rape, and there's no way it makes it into a wide-released film.
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