"Midsommar" (2019) Review
Did you read my review of You Were Never Really Here?
That might seem like a strange way to start a review, but if you’ve never read that, you should. It’ll help this review make a bit more sense, not that the movies are actually directly related in any way, shape, or form. They are only related in that I had similar experiences with both.
I had no idea what to make of You Were Never Really Here when I left the theater for the first time. It kind of drove me crazy, but nowadays if you ask me about it, I would tell you that I regret not putting it in my Top 10 for 2018 (it made the Top 15, but didn’t make it to the 10). It’s a gorgeous movie, and once you accept the movie on its own terms, it’s one of the most rewarding and strange movies I saw in 2018.
Midsommar was similar for me. I saw it two weeks before the general public at an early screening, and walking out of that theater I had no idea what to think. I wasn’t sure if loved it, hated it, liked it, disliked it, or anything.
Half a year later (and after seeing it in theaters more times than I care to mention), I will say that I liked Midsommar. A lot. As I’ve had more time to think about the movie, it’s really started to sink in as one of the stranger movies I’ve seen at this scope and scale in a long time, an indie movie that somehow feels utterly massive at every turn. The scope of this world is so much larger than Hereditary, the last movie from this film’s director, Ari Aster. And if you’re a fan of that movie, leave your expectations at the door. Midsommar is not “just another Hereditary.” It’s something else.
If you ask me, it’s better. Hereditary is a horror film that undeniably haunted my nightmares immediately after I saw it, but I’ve never really loved it per se (though, I want to give it another shot soon). But Midsommar took over my entire life for the summer. I kept seeing it over and over again, to see if I could spot another detail in its immaculate production design, to experience the dread of a dying relationship over and over again.
Even calling Midsommar a horror film seems weird. I hate it when people try to coin nonsense terms like “elevated horror” to describe certain films in the genre, and I certainly wouldn’t call Midsommar that.
But what I would call it might strike people as odd, if not even a tad sociopathic:
Midsommar is a dark comedy.
It is a dark comedy in a way that’s similar to An American Werewolf in London. Both films have scenes that are particularly funny and raunchy, and each film suddenly pivots to imagery and moments to brutal, so painful, and so horrific, that you wonder why you laughed at any other part of the movie in the first place. Being a big fan of dark comedies myself, it’s almost like Ari Aster set out to make a movie for someone like me.
Midsommar doesn’t exactly start funny. During the film’s prologue, we’re introduced to the rapidly decaying relationship between Dani (Florence Pugh, acting at a level that I would seriously compare to Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, or other classic horror heroines that find themselves drawn into darkness) and Christian (Jack Reynor, channeling every bad asshole boyfriend you met in college). They should absolutely break up with one another, Christian’s friends Josh (William Jackson Harper, a somewhat reasonable anthropology student/bookworm), Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren, a kind and cordial exchange student from Sweden), and Mark (Will Poulter, playing the most obnoxious best friend in existence) all want the break up to happen.
But by the end of the prologue, events transpire that make any breakup in the immediate future impossible, and in a doomed attempt to keep their relationship alive, Christian (sheepishly) ends up inviting Dani on a trip with his friends after a brutally awkward confrontation. Pelle has invited all of them to his hometown commune Harga in Sweden, and while it looks like an Epcot village filled with beautiful sunlight, constant rituals of eating, drinking, and dancing, none of them seem to fully realize what truly awaits them there.
I don’t even know where to truly start praising this movie. The production design is easy enough, it’s practically perfect, as the commune of Harga is a massive series of outdoor sets, many of which have hand-painted murals inside of them. The attention to detail is staggering, especially from a director making their second feature-length film. The cinematography used to capture these environments is beyond precise. Long takes with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends make up damn near 70% of the whole movie, with most takes functioning as entire scenes. The sunlit aesthetic gives the whole film an otherworldly feel, assisted by a plethora of steadicam shots, careful dolly shots, and all sorts of neat tricks.
Where the film really finds its true power is in its actors though. They might as well have retitled Midsommar to “Florence Pugh Acts Her Ass Off in a Performance That Should and Won’t Win An Academy Award,” because I’ve rarely seen someone embody grief, rage, and neverending loneliness in the way she does. When she cries, it’s almost primordial. My skin crawls thinking about how she practically combines hoarse screaming and coughing with her tears, and she does it multiple times throughout the movie. For what her character is, it is the rare perfect performance. I have no complaints, no nitpicks, nothing.
That’s not to say Pugh is the only performer putting in any effort. Jack Reynor effortlessly embodies the “bad boyfriend in a horror movie,” but to the point of uncomfortable realism. Will Poulter as the films’ “comedic relief/horny college student abroad” is a walking-talking trope, but he aces it so much he gets away with it. William Jackson Harper nails the “bookworm” character, down to the faults that blind such a character to the point that they don’t realize the horror they’ve actually walked into.
The surprise is Vilhelm Blongdren as Pelle. I’ve never seen Blongdren in another movie before, so I don’t have a frame of reference for his range as an actor, but he is perfectly cast as the “kind cult member that’s definitely hiding his true intentions.” He doesn’t play it like a cartoon caricature. In fact, if it wasn’t for some lingering edits that show us his face as he stares in admiration at the sight of his plans coming together, you would almost believe his sincerity.
The film’s musical score by Bobby Krlic (credited as The Haxan Cloak) is the icing on the cake throughout this whole movie. While plenty of the score is non-diegetic (made up mostly of droning sounds and discord), the diegetic music performed by the members of the commune throughout the film makes Midsommar truly exceptional. I don’t want to compare the films too much, but I will say that I think Colin Stetson’s Hereditary score is straight-up superior in the non-diegetic department. However, Midsommar’s in-scene music is not only gorgeous but crucial to major scenes and setpieces throughout the entire film.
I will also mention briefly the make-up effects. Without getting into spoilers, they are… Very well done. Horrifyingly well done, as a matter of fact. A little shakier is the film’s digital effects, mostly employed during sequences where characters are tripping on mushrooms (an occurrence that definitely happens more than once) to warp the environment and human faces throughout. The results are admittedly mixed at times, but what makes these sequences work is the spot-on details written into the script. As someone who has actually had to “babysit” some folks who were tripping on mushrooms… Good lord did this movie make me laugh.
I can’t stress enough that this movie is meant to be laughed at. Seriously, the horror pieces are scary, but the humor here is something like if you crossed the surrealist scenarios of Luis Bunuel’s films (think Phantom of Liberty/The Exterminating Angel) with a raunchy college vacation movie. I know that mix sounds completely insane, but you just have to trust me when I say that it just works (in particular, one ritual sequence late in the film is so uncomfortable that once it gets beyond weird, it becomes one of the scenes I laughed at the hardest in theaters in 2019).
I could go on for a lot longer about Midsommar, but I think you get the point. I love this film to bits, if it wasn’t for the existence of one other film in 2019, it would be my favorite film of the entire year. Instead of making another Hereditary, Aster pushed in a completely different and compelling direction. And frankly, I hope he makes even more movies like Midsommar, brutal and unflinching portraits of very human problems set against borderline surrealist backdrops, tinged with unyielding visions of violence and the darkest humor possible.
(Though, come to think of it, Hereditary definitely fits that definition, minus the dark humor part.)
For the right person, Midsommar comes at the highest recommendation.
Oh, one last thing…
This is a review for the “Theatrical Cut” of the film, which runs for 2 hours and 27 minutes. There is a “Director’s Cut” that runs for 2 hours and 51 minutes, a pretty substantial addition of footage.
If you ask me, I think the Director’s Cut is really great at making certain pieces of the storyline even more uncomfortable (Jack Reynor’s character, Christian, is a substantially bigger piece of shit in this version of the film), but I prefer the Theatrical. Simply put, both versions end the exact same way, and I think both versions are delivering the same arc. You just get more rituals and more backstory to make certain emotional gut-punches a lot harder.
If you’ve never seen the film at all, I’d definitely start with the Theatrical cut. If you like that and want even more, check out the Director’s Cut.
