Movie Review: Midsommar

Folk Horror Not for the Faint of Heart

By Joanna Patzig

A24 Studios

By now you’ve probably heard about how wild the movie Midsommar is, and it’s all true. It’s a marathon of grief, sex, and death, shown in bright northern daylight. The story follows Dani, a young woman with anxiety that’s compounded when she tragically loses her family. Struggling with grief, she ends up joining her unsupportive boyfriend and his friends on a trip to Sweden where they find themselves immersed in a pagan festival. Director Ari Aster aptly describes the film as “a break up movie disguised as a folk-horror.” Like Aster’s first film, “Hereditary,” the movie combines psychological horrors with the occult.
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If you’re averse to watching visceral violence and psychological horror this movie is probably not for you. Usually when I watch a gory horror movie I struggle to get through scenes of prolonged violence, but then it doesn’t haunt me too much afterwards. Midsommar was almost the opposite; I couldn’t look away at the theater, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not used to violence being so visually beautiful, I almost want to go see it again.

There is a lot going on in Midsommar, from visual exploration of psychoactive drugs, to pagan symbolism. For me, it hit hardest aesthetically. From the use of darkness in the introduction of the movie, to the blinding sun of the movie filmed in Budapest, the cinematography is beautiful and psychedelic. This adds to the unsettling suspense and emphasizes the brutal violence. Dani, played by Florence Pugh, is completely relatable and difficult at the same time. While other characters are played for more comedic or horrific effect, Dani’s autonomy leads to stunning emotion, and moral questions. Sidenote - another moral question is raised by a potentially problematic depiction of disability. 

Finally, the way Midsommar unfolds is just so weird and sick that it’s hard to process, it leaves you reeling. Which is exactly what I want from abject art.
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