Midsommar (2019) is sort of the horror smash of the season, Ari Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary. It’s also a kind of gender switched Wicker Man.
It starts with Florence Pugh trying to get in touch with her sister - who isn’t returning calls because she has killed herself and her parents. So Pugh is a little low. Her boyfriend, Jack Reynor, isn’t helping much. He’s kind of withholding, and he spends a lot of time with his student friends, who want him to dump her. He doesn’t even mention that one of the friends has invited the crew to his village in Sweden for the Midsommar festival. But she winds up going along.
The village is a sort of pagan cult commune and the rituals and games seem like fun - at first. One of the rituals involves making the old people jump off a cliff, and crushing them with hammers if they survive. It’s the Trondheim Hammer Dance. This puts the visitors off the whole thing a bit. But Pugh gets elected May Queen, and her boyfriend gets a sexy prize as well. And then things get really hairy.
The relationships between Pugh and Reynor is classic - her clingy, him withholding. The other students with their rivalries and academic misdemeanors are fun too. The beauty of the setting, mountains and flowers and homespun clothes is relaxing, making the horror all the more gruesome. And best of all, you don’t have Nic Cage shouting about bees.
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