Oh man, I had high hopes for this one and Ari Aster actually delivered.
Midsommar is not a traditional horror film, it's not trying to make you jump, but it will inevitably make you deeply uncomfortable.
Aster brings in the same masterful cinematographer from Hereditary, Pawel Pogorzelski, to create some truly mind-bending visuals that have you slightly off balance from the opening shots. The things this film accomplishes visually are a worthy film-going experience on their own. The lighting also deserves special mention as it's essentially the opposite of every other horror film, it's relentlessly bright, which, it turns out is just as unsettling as the opposite.
I'm loathe to say too much about the plot here as I think this is the kind of film you should go into blind, but suffice it to say, I had an idea of what was going to happen early on and I was kind of right but that in no way made the film less engrossing. Aster clearly wanted to write another character-driven horror film, and he definitely succeeded.
Aster wears his influences on his sleeve a little bit, riffing on other films like The Wicker Man, The Village, and believe it or not 2007 classic Shrooms. But these feel more like playful nods to those that came before, this film firmly has its own identity, its own story to tell and themes to explore.
The performances follow the more traditional horror route riffing on the typical college-age archetypes you'd expect, but the characters, particularly our protagonist Dani is handled with far more care than those films ever bother to. This film cares about its characters, sometimes in a pretty twisted way, but it does care and that comes across in how they're portrayed and deepens the overall investment in what's happening. Florence Pugh as the protagonist Dani gives a standout performance, portraying Dani’s emotional turmoil and growth with aplomb. The others are certainly competent but nowhere near as engaging as Dani who is the most complex character by far.
This is a fairly long film especially for horror, running just over 2 1/2 hours. But I was glued to the screen the entire time, the film never failed to be visually interesting, making great use of the stark beauty of the Swedish countryside as well as mind-bending but fairly subtle visual effects when portraying a drug-addled characters perspective (these reminded a bit of Mandy), driven by a strong protagonist struggling with love, loss, and a sense of belonging, following Dani's ascent (or descent, you decide) was fascinating and surprisingly relate-able from beginning to end.
9/10 It's a trip