Midsommar

Midsommar

Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.

  • Released: 2019-07-03
  • Runtime: 148 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
  • Stars: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm Blomgren, Isabelle Grill, Gunnel Fred, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Henrik Norlén, Agnes Westerlund Rase, Julia Ragnarsson, Mats Blomgren, Lars Väringer, Anna Åström, Hampus Hallberg, Liv Mjönes, Louise Peterhoff, Katarina Weidhagen, Björn Andrésen, Tomas Engström, Dag Andersson, Lennart R. Svensson, Anders Beckman, Rebecka Johnston, Tove Skeidsvoll, Anders Back, Anki Larsson, Levente Puczkó-Smith, Frans Cavallin Rosengarten, Vilmos Kolba, Mihály Kaszás, Gabi Fón, Zsolt Bojári, Klaudia Csányi, Anna Berentzen, Austin R. Grant, Maximilian Slash Marton
  • Director: Ari Aster
 Comments
  • bethstephey - 10 June 2024
    Numerous May Queens when the festival only occurs every ninety years
    I have a question If this festival only occurs every ninety years then how and why are there photos of the "former May Queens"? Did I miss something along the way? Idk doesn't make sense to me. They never mention any other kind of festival to account for these photos ( this requires a lot of words but I don't have any other besides my question) lol I love the movie. After a little research I did see all the little "Easter eggs" . Mark is hilarious with some of his comments. Reviews say that Christian is uncaring to Dani but I really didn't see that at all! Another cool thing I didn't catch the first time I watched it ( I've watched it umpteen times) was the " breathing " flowers on Danis crown. Very cool. Ok I've used enough letters. Can someone answer my question listed above? Thanks in advance!
  • chand-suhas - 30 April 2024
    A nice summer vacation!
    Dani has just lost her sister and parents, struggling to cope up with the loss. Her boyfriend Christian is being distant with her and wants to breakup but in the current situation is unable to do so, as Dani is frequently having panic attacks. Months later their Swedish friend Pelle invites the couple along with their two friends to their village for a summer festival. The little community of Hårga awaits their visit and the group is fascinated by their traditions initially. But the practices soon become too much for them to bear while the group gets divided in deciding whether to stay or leave. To those who stay, what impact their ancient practices have on them, forms rest of the story.

    I watched the Director's Cut and not once felt the runtime to be lengthy at 2hrs 50mins. Ari Aster has proved himself each time and I took too much time to watch his 2nd directorial. The concept hit me hard and the staging of several scenes. It is the psychological aspect than the gore or Shock value that leaves a lasting impact in Ari Aster films, be it Hereditary or this or Beau is Afraid. The setting of the story as well as characters in the first hour is so effective, it builds up perfectly to what's on the store an hour into the film.

    Once the shocker scene is over, it's back to psychological drama, focusing on Dani and Christian, with him constantly gaslighting her and Christian doing the same with his friend Josh. It is here we get a proper character arc for Dani and Christian, exploring their personalities, even establishing how their stay in the commune has impacted on who they are. From nowhere to belong to finding themselves in that particular moment among the commune. The way the group responds to Dani's outburst stayed with me.
  • tcastignetti - 29 March 2024
    Masterpiece!
    I completely loved Misommar! Such a spectacular vision of underlying horror immersed in such bright colors and ambience, lulling you into a false sense of curiosity and comfort. I could not take my eyes away from the screen as each and every scene played out. From the beginning to the final scene, it was amazing. The slow build was so mesmerizing as well as visually stunning!

    From such a horrific beginning, the brief sense of hope, only to just redirect back to such emotional turmoil. Brilliantly written, beautifully portrayed, and every scene was a delicious build up, leaving me completely unaware of where it was going. I simply gave up midway trying to figure anything out and sat back for the ride. And the very last moment brought a tear to my eye.

    To me, this will go down as a masterpiece of not only psychological horror, but cinematically such a brilliant movie that captures the viewer and draws them in, completely immersing them into each scene.
  • VikiLauda - 1 January 2023
    Midsommer is literally a TRIP!
    It took me three watches to even begin to understand this movie (on my first watch I hated it!) & I eventually came to enjoy it after I understood all the small bits of the story I had missed or not picked up on untill I googled it & got some more information. The third time I watched I pulled the onlne available PDF script from StudioBinder to follow it better & I must say WOW what a movie!

    First off I would not say this movie is a "Horror". I am a massive fan of horror movies & if you watch this expecting a horror movie as I did you will be hugely disapointed. I would class Midsommer as a creepy thriller centered on Pagan ritual & Rites, some of which have a basis in real hstory. The cinematography is awesome & oddly for its subject matter this is a visually "bright" movie, almost as if it was filmed in old style technicolor. The acting is terrific as is the direction & the flow of the story & at almost 3 hours in length it does not feel like a long drawn out movie. Be warned though there are many tiny parts to the story that appear almost hidden (in plain sight) so this movie demands your full attention from start to finish. Pay close attention to what is happening in the background shots & what the extras are doing (there is goings on with a straw goat for instance!) as this all fits the story too. If you miss any of these small details this could add disapointment to your watching experience. Also be warned for sex scenes & full frontal male nudity & some scenes of gore although I thought the gore scenes where not done very well, but this certainly did not halt my eventual enjoyment of this film. The character development was not too hot either & the back story could have been explored better. Also I was baffled as to why a midsommer festival had May Day type celebrations as the two festivals are two months apart. However I did enjoy the excellent music which was oddly upbreat in the final scenes, giving it (for me) an even creepier dimention. If you have seen this movie once & hated it give it another try & pay all your attention to it to pick up on those small details that make all the difference. But if you have not seen this film & enjoy creepy, slightly disturbing thriller movies I would bet you will enjoy Midsommer, but this film is NOT, I repeat NOT a horror movie. Midsommer is creepy, disturbing & kind of gets under your skin. Parts of it are very trippy too as our characters are sometimes on drugs, so this is definatly an over 18's movie, which also has a little light swearing. A lot of love went into this film & if audiences take a little care & gift it their full attention, if really shows. I can almost bet on it that within 10 years or so this will be a cult classic like it's inspiration, the Wicker Man from 1973.
  • jhbeckwith - 18 December 2022
    Pros and a Con of Midsommar
    No spoilers below.

    If you're in the mood for a horror movie which gets mentioned in the same breath as Get Out, Us, the Wicker Man, and The VVitch, then I suggest Midsommar.

    On the other hand, for audiences who are squeamish about realistic gore, ingested drug use, reproductive biology, and nudity, then Midsommar might not fit your bill.

    During the first thirty minutes especially, I thought, "This would be a great movie to use for instructional how-to purposes in a college film course."

    (I'm not usually attracted to a scene where it's just a small group of characters conversing, but I was impressed at Midsommar's many scenes during the first 30 minutes where the audience gets to visually track all the motives-left-unsaid.)

    Those were the sort of scenes which made me think that the director planned out a lot ahead of time; the cast was smoothly deliberate in how their body language didn't match their words, and I'll bet none of the cast got their timing right on the first try. Skill was present.

    I.e. I liked Midsommar's many scenes of oh-so-THIS-is-what-good-acting-and-good-directing-looks-like-I-need-to-take-notes-because-wow.

    Also, I personally like that it depicted post-college students in their twenties as realistic, nostalgic, and embarrassing. :-)

    Side note: I appreciated how Midsommar has so many subtle examples of how any society can pass its knowledge, values, and skills onto the next generation.

    Midsommar is also one of the few stories I can think of where I'm staring straight at the villains but I just can't bring myself to hate these villains as much as I ought to.

    (Even when I was shown in the movie exactly whom the bad guys are, I didn't feel unsafe around them. Frankly, these antagonists are not irresponsible or immature or reckless characters. The band of protagonists, in contrast, contain characters who made me wonder how on Earth any of us IRL survive to age 30.)

    Midsommar is the first horror tale I've seen where the many drug-taking characters help the story become even better. Prescribed, recreational, legal, not-so-legal, medically-tested, homebrewed, responsibly-taken, irresponsibly-abused, Midsommar weaves drugs into the story very effectively.

    If characters are under the effects of a drug, we can't tell for certain whether they're seeing something preternaturally-unearthly (and symbolically appropriate) or if they're tripping.

    I.e. In Midsommar, the audience can't clearly decide between, "Okay, what I just saw was definitely supernatural," or, "Okay, what I just saw was definitely a drug-induced physiological reaction."

    Yet, there ARE plenty of moments akin to, "Y'know, if you kids hadn't eagerly accepted that spiked harvest wine or those magic festival brownies, you might be able to gauge how much danger you are or aren't in." (and kudos to how the cultists themselves would be motivated to be sedated during certain rites-of-passage.)

    My only real complaint about Midsommar was that immediately afterward, I had to look up clarification online regarding the exposition of the whole four-in four-out pick-one "choosing" at the end. (Granted, I've read that the director's cut had at least 30 minutes added on, and that their inclusion might have made some parts of the story seem less out-of-the-blue.)

    One pleasant surprise was the brief scene involving the stick of yew on the tongues. (It's a major bonus to be able to contemplate the pros and cons of orthodox, organized religions in an unthreatening manner by using the lens of a fictional pagan cult. Well done!)

    Another pleasant surprise was that this is a movie which benefits from a second viewing, but not in the sense of Sixth Sense or The Village. Midsommar benefits from a second viewing because the audience gets to look for clues (and to verify the absence of clues). What seem to be possible plot holes at first glance are surprisingly airtight.

    Similarly, Midsommar has more than a couple of instances where you'll later exclaim, "Are we not going to talk about the fill-in-the-blank?"

    (For me, it was: are we not going to talk about the smiley creepy midwife kneeling down and gently holding your hand?!?)
  • deadbull-95171 - 24 November 2022
    Sad re-imagining of 'The Wickerman' assumes, as usual, that the audience has no memory whatsoever of the superior progenitors that this shamelessly parasites
    My title is really all that is neeeded to be said but to oblige word minimums I'll extend this. The 1973 version of the Wickerman was about a Pagan cult that required human sacrifice, including the final burning scene. The 2008 remake with Nick Cage weakens the first, as usual, with a sequel that simply retells the story with updated camera work. Let a few more years go by and we get this revamped thing. It's identical with enhanced gore and a few more details of Pagan rituals thrown in, but no matter how you dress it up, it takes the original, fairly unpretentious and slow movie, and just amplifies the mediocrity.

    In the same way every piece of recorded music, moving through the infinite permutations of marketing, from the crudest analogue stuff invented by Thomas Edison, to the sterile digital stuff we have today, the quality of sound reproduction has stayed the same or gotten worse, and the main point is just to redeploy the same music over and over, to sell the same song with a million new formats, while making the preceding formats obsolete, forcing you to spend more money to hear the same thing.

    Same principle here, except with movies the technique is more reliant on shorter memory spans as the species becomes more stupid, and the premise that the same garbage can be rereleased or as a sequel on the assumption that newer generations are completely ignorant of history or source material, a fact that is largely true and easy to exploit. With very rare exceptions remakes get further and further away from what made the original some sort of marketing success, whether it was good or not, and this is not a rare exception, though it has time tested additions on the violent side and zippier cinematography. Big deal.....waste of time....not that wasting time is a bad thing, almost everything we do qualifies as that anyway, but........whatever.
  • mortiereline - 31 October 2022
    The only horror is how insanely horrible this one is
    I've seen lots of bad horrors but this one takes the cake. Most of the times when a horror is bad, you'll still get a laugh out of it. But not even that was possible with Midsommar. We just sat there speechless, watching this insanely slow build-up, waiting for anything exciting to happen. No storybuild, horrendous acting, boring, overall a shame we lost two and a half hours of our life by watching this garbage. Do yourself a favour and skip this one. What my friend said after finishing this movie; it was so bad that I feel the urge to swear in my own language and bang my head on a wall. Enough said.
  • glassman-38371 - 17 October 2022
    very edge and strange
    I've very much enjoyed this film. It kept me on edge the entire time, even when the film depicted 'down' times. This is a movie which makes you pay attention, and take note of a plethora of symbology -- from the very beginning panorama to the end.

    I enjoyed how the characters change, and the tension of the movie increases contually, relentlessly, without allowing hardly any breaks. It continually surprises. I love a story with a hook at the end. This story is filled with hooks.

    I would classify this film as horror, as it horrified me. I will also watch it many times, secure in the knowledge that I will notice more artifacts which I didn't see in the first viewing.