MIDSOMMAR

Midsommar Movie Review

A few Americans travel to Sweden to study a summertime ritual at a hippieesque commune. What they find there is a series of strange events, hallucinogenic drugs, and...well, nothing else really. This 2019 film starts off just fine--Dani's (Florence Pugh) sister kills herself and her parents. Dani turns to her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) for support, but once they and a couple other friends make it to Sweden, the entire movie goes sideways. They arrive to a field full of people in all white--I personally would have turned the car around and headed back the opposite direction at this point, but these folks decided to join the Swedish meatballs in a shrooms-filled afternoon of doing nothing before arriving at the village, where everybody sings, dances, has supper all together, largely share one large room for sleeping, and perform various odd rituals, including a couple of old people launching themselves off a cliff.

"How sad..how are my flowers?"

Still, our Americans decide to stick it out, and are killed off one by one. This movie is quite unusual, but not in any good, or even interesting, way at all. It's a lot like both versions of The Wicker Man, but not as entertaining as either. The directing  and editing of the film are so pompous they're laughable--picture the annoying jock in high school trying to impress a girl by doing push-ups. From the upside down camera shot to the character going from one setting to the next without moving, you are rolling your eyes before even getting a fourth of the way into this journey. Speaking of time, the director's cut of this movie comes in at a staggering and obscenely arrogant 172 minutes, with a total of maybe...MAYBE...ten minutes of anything of any interest at all actually happening...this interest is limited to gore. The final half hour is brutally awful--my girlfriend suggested just turning the movie off, but I argued we made it this far into it, so we may as well see how it ends...I should have gone with her idea. We got this movie from Redbox, using a rent one, get one free promo. I deemed this one the free movie, and still feel ripped off.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 3

Midsommar Movie Trailer