Midsommar (new movie from director of Hereditary)

heebusjeebus · 06-03-2019 5:17pm #1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0UWIya-O0s

I loved Hereditary, especially the ending with Paimon. This new movie seems to be leaning heavily into folklore and pagan festivities.
Jack Raynor stars in it too.

Tom Mann Centuria · 06-03-2019 5:18pm

Any Murders?

I'll see myself out.

buried · 07-03-2019 10:59am

Should be Good. Great use of colour and light in that trailer too.

correction · 08-03-2019 1:58pm

Looks good. Is this being classified as a horror?

El Duda · 08-03-2019 2:06pm

I'm in

Sad Professor · 16-05-2019 11:37am

New trailer:

Dades · 16-05-2019 2:52pm

Whatever stringed instrument they were playing throughout that trailer had me spooked anyway.

Reminds me a bit of Apostle from last year.

pixelburp · 16-05-2019 5:37pm

The Swedish Wicker Man, by the looks of things. Not a bad thing.

Always strange to see an actor you have only otherwise seen in one role (Chidi from The Good Place) appear in other, unrelated material

justinbellford · 16-05-2019 6:57pm

I am interested to see Chidi is something new too.

Very interested in a horror movie that looks to be primarily in broad daylight.

Hereditary was great, stoked for this.

Aisling(",) · 05-07-2019 8:39am

I caught this last night.

I loved the setting and how unsettling the entire society is. The fact the entire film was set during daylight was a bit unsettling.

I enjoyed it but as I was tired I felt it ran a bit long.

Small Wonder · 06-07-2019 10:00am

Saw this last night. I don't know what it, but it's not a horror. Hereditary is a far more conventional film in that regard. But I preferred this. Expect a few walkouts. There were two in my screening. There's some very challenging imagery. It also captures the feeling of an acid/mushroom trip better than any film I've ever seen. I'm going back tonight for another viewing. It's definitely one for the big screen.

johnny_ultimate · 07-07-2019 10:39pm

Leave your inhibitions at the door - this film needs you to attune to its eccentric wavelength, and there are many nasty, vivid pleasures to be found if you do.

I'm not going to say this film isn't about anything, because it is: it's about a woman experiencing extreme grief while also being stuck in the tail-end of an immensely toxic relationship. It's about that in quite a satisfying way, so bring a date along for sure! But this is a tone piece first and foremost, and a helluva one. There's nothing necessarily unpredictable about the horrors that unfold under the perpetual Swedish sunlight - it's all about how it unfolds. As much a comedy as a horror, it nevertheless hits a primal level of creepy at key moments that's rather unlike anything else I've seen in semi-mainstream horror recently. The way it matches

truly grotesque corpse mutilation with scenes of hysterical joy

was fascinating - it really nails this casual, disturbing strangeness, perhaps emulating the characters' states-of-mind as they consume various psychoactive substances and witness with disbelief these outrageous rituals.

It was true of Hereditary, and it's true of Midsommar: Ari Aster is a breath of fresh air for American genre fare, even if this less snugly fits into any particular generic mode. It's not just him, of course: this sings thanks to Pawel Pogorzelski's ever-inventive cinematography, the Haxan Cloak's forceful score and Lucian Johnston's editing. Not forgetting Henrik Svensson's production design or Andrea Flesch's costume work! It's just a bit of a stylistic powerhouse all-in-all. The choice to predominantly shoot in sunlight with plenty of bright colours is a great one, but I was on-board from the extended prologue.

What an opening 20 minutes. The decision to often shoot characters in rigid frames (Reynor's character is also seen through a distance through mirrors on a couple of occasions - a clever bit of visual mood-setting) contrasts nicely with the more freeform backdrop of the rest of the film. But also love how horrifying the inciting incident is - really lands the utter devastation of that moment, like a drill to the skull. The finale, meanwhile, is a much more confident

explosion of cultish pageantry than Hereditary's conclusion- that scene of the 'boyfriend bear' silhouette in the flaming temple is wonderful, and the final moment of mad catharsis for Dani is a perfect end-note

.

There are loads of great moments throughout, but one tiny thing that has had a strangely lasting impact is one of the feast scenes where the filmmakers make a simple tweak: they change the hue of a character's drink. It's a beautiful little touch - the simplest possible adjustment to unbalance the scene and have this sinister detail hanging in the air. With so many overtly odd details littered throughout, tiny extra flourishes are what push it beyond.

This was obvious from Lady Macbeth, but Florence Pugh ****ing rules - it's not always the most complex character, but she owns it as she always does. Reynor gives it his all, and fittingly

we very much see it all

.

But yeah above all else this is one to simply sink into and let it do its thing. I don't think the pacing is maintained over the whole 140 minutes - some of the segments leading up to the wild finale are the most sluggish, and it lacks the thematic trickiness of Hereditary. Generally though it's a trip - vicious when it needs to be, uproarious throughout. Indulgent and over-the-top? Of course, and it wears its influences on its sleeve. But it embraces it all so very wholeheartedly

Harry Palmr · 07-07-2019 10:41pm

Any Wicker men in it?

pixelburp · 07-07-2019 10:54pm

I know many reviews have said this isn't a pure horror, and I haven't seen the film yet either, but I immediately applaud it being set in daylight. Not enough "horror" cinema sets itself in open sunlight, too stuck in the tropes of dark and shadow to extract cheap scares. A good unnerving tale should work in any lighting, and not enough films use daylight as a tool.

irishfeen · 08-07-2019 4:05pm

Seen this last night, we both didn’t think much of it at all. Wouldn’t call it a horror in any sense of the word - I found Hereditary much more deep and frightening, this is more strange then anything.

6/10 at best from us, had expected much more.

JP Liz V1 · 08-07-2019 9:56pm

Jack Reynor baring all seems to be most of the headlines

branie2 · 09-07-2019 9:46pm

I'll see it next week

Mr E · 09-07-2019 11:54pm

Such a strange movie. I really liked it. I think.
I'll need to digest it a bit first.

Stunning cinematography.

The best part was watching the bewildered faces afterwards as everyone was leaving.

Fingers Mcginty · 10-07-2019 9:10am

What an amazing piece of work this film is. I've never seen anything quite like it.

gazzer · 10-07-2019 1:07pm

I loved this movie. I went to see it last Friday. Will definately watch it again. My only gripe (nothing to with the movie) was that I went to see it in the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield. First time going there and I dont think I will go again. The amount of people (from about 20 minutes into the movie) who got up to go to the loo or the bar was crazy. There was a constant stream of people walking in front of the screen for about an hour. Very annoying.

Fysh · 11-07-2019 1:33pm

I caught this last night and it was tremendous, one of the beat horror films I've seen in years in part because it doesn't insist on restricting itself to only horror as a tone. The opening 20 minutes or so are absolutely brutal in establishing Dani and Christian's characters. Reynor was queasily great in this, the script making great use of how effortlessly he projects an aura of five-star arsehole, but Florence Pugh was absolutely stellar. William Jackson Harper and Will Poulter also put in strong turns as believably unlikeable characters. The whole production is great - music, visuals, design, script, it all meshes seamlessly.

It's that rarity for me of being a film sufficiently good I might well see it again at the cinema.

Ally Dick · 12-07-2019 12:23am

Absolutely terrible film. I'm gutted. So disappointing. Weird with no twists. Only good thing was the cinematography

Shelga · 12-07-2019 12:41pm

Yeah, people saying it’s absolutely brilliant, did we see a different film??

I thought it was ok-to-good until about halfway through, when it just went bat**** insane, and especially for the last quarter, my friend and I got a fit of the giggles, it was so off-the-charts ridiculous. We were by no means the only ones in the cinema who couldn’t stop laughing. This cannot have been the effect the director intended. For us to think it’s absurd, maybe- surely he didn’t want us unable to stop laughing. Maybe he did??

I’ll say this for it though- it’s definitely the film I’ve seen that provoked the widest spectrum of emotion in me. Before we started laughing, I was deeply disturbed by the cliff/ritual scene

Ally Dick · 12-07-2019 1:07pm

It reminded me of "Mandy" with Nicolas Cage, which was a crazy, psychedelic film. Or the work of Jonas Akerlund..sh!t films with vibrant colours

gibgodsman · 12-07-2019 1:08pm

Am I the only one who thought Hereditary was a bad movie? There was no horror in it, I literally spent the majority of the movie laughing at the supposed horror parts

Small Wonder · 13-07-2019 1:31pm

gibgodsman wrote: »

Am I the only one who thought Hereditary was a bad movie? There was no horror in it, I literally spent the majority of the movie laughing at the supposed horror parts

I thought it was good but, as with Midsommar, and even The Witch from a years back, it was wrongly marketed as a straight-up horror movie. There seems to a little mini-movement of US indies that are tipping their hat to the genre but which are very much doing their own thing. Viewed in that light I think Hereditary holds up.

Ally Dick · 13-07-2019 11:31pm

gibgodsman wrote: »

Am I the only one who thought Hereditary was a bad movie? There was no horror in it, I literally spent the majority of the movie laughing at the supposed horror parts

No horror in it?

Seances, apparitions, headless corpses, real demonic symbols, pages being written with nobody holding the pen, decapitation

. I don't know what film you were looking at

evad_lhorg · 14-07-2019 11:16pm

gibgodsman wrote: »

Am I the only one who thought Hereditary was a bad movie? There was no horror in it, I literally spent the majority of the movie laughing at the supposed horror parts

I thought Hereditary was rubbish mainly due to the end. I enjoyed the first half and found it quite freaky but the end was absolute trash.

I was supposed to see this this evening and my friend, who I saw Hereditary with, said Midsommar was similarly crap....

I'll probably still go this week though

Outlaw Pete · 15-07-2019 4:58pm

Interesting to begin with but just ultimately turned to trash.

Rake of walk outs at the screening I was at. Wish I'd done the same but I stuck it out as I thought the end might be interesting, it isn't.

But, you know yourselves, crap like this will always have its supporters.

Fysh · 15-07-2019 6:00pm

I know it's not necessarily fun to revisit an experience that you didn't enjoy to begin with, but would any of you who really disliked it mind going into more detail about why it didn't work for you?

I get why Hereditary is a divisive film, but to me Midsommar didn't have the same faults. It would be interesting (and hopefully conversation-sparking) to know more about what people aren't enjoying? Were you expecting anything in particular that it did, or didn't, deliver?

Outlaw Pete · 15-07-2019 6:47pm

Well, as I say, the film starts off well to begin with, we are introduced to some interesting characters and also the beginnings of a decent story (with regards to Pugh's struggles with her sister and her boyfriend inviting her to go away with him, and his friends. despite him not really wanting to be around her anymore) but that's where the film being an interesting one ends...... and I'd usually say 'for me' after that but it's so bloody dull from that point on that I struggle to understand why anyone would be entertained by what was to follow.

As far as I'm concerned films like this are engaging in tricks to make them appear to be far more interesting and artistic than they actually are. Lots of style sprinkled with a plethora of ludicrousness and all presented as shocking, of course, but which most audiences end up laughing at. Wasn't in the least suspenseful, let alone gripping. Utter tripe and it saddens me that people are interested and entertained by films of this calibre as it will most likely mean more will be made.

I find such films as tiresome as I do high budget mind numbing popcorn flicks like the latest Godzilla crap, but sadly both seem to be more and more common.

johnny_ultimate · 15-07-2019 7:51pm

I was laughing at it pretty frequently, because it's a very funny film. Comedy is as essential an ingredient in Aster's freewheeling cocktail as any of the scares.

Ari Aster wrote:

I hope it’s wrenching and funny. And I hope you’re laughing at the end! Best-case scenario, you’re laughing at the end, and the laughs catch in your throat a little.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/07/ari-aster-midsommar-interview/593194/

Fysh · 15-07-2019 11:18pm

I thought the shifts in tone were much better handled in Midsommar than Hereditary, but perhaps a key for me was that I've met people exactly like Reynor's Christian, so while he was an odious little turdstreak of a character, he was for me at least a wholly believable one. Dani's gaslit and emotionally harrowed character was also believable for me, and enough of the film follows her experience that the shifts in tone and oddness made a sort of sense.

Mind you, from the first I'd heard of the film the most obvious comparison seemed to be The Wicker Man, which for me at least equated to a frame of mind along the lines of "it's not about what happens but how we get there". The visual elements of the presentation and the various jokes sprinkled throughout worked for me as a sort of punctuation amongst the larger uneasy or outright gorily brutal bits, but I expect that if the weirder bits aren't hitting home the lighter moments might just come off as incongruous.

In terms of more things like this being made - not enjoying the story or its telling is an absolutely personal thing and whatever someone says about a film won't make another person retroactively enjoy it. But for me, there are several things I would be delighted for other films to mimic from Midsommar - the use of subtle and minor effects to emphasise the mood in certain scenes, the use of music, the prop & production design were fantastic, and the photography looked stunning.

Outlaw Pete · 15-07-2019 11:31pm

I'm not suggesting there wasn't aspects of the film where laughter wasn't just what Aster may have wanted, or at least something he would welcome. Of course there are lots of dark films, be they horror or otherwise, where the viewer will go from feeling uneasy and/or tense, to immediately laughing. The genre is full of them, of course, be harder to find such films where that's not an aspect, than where it is.

However, what I'm referring to is laughter at scenes where that wasn't the intention, scenes which were clearly meant to be "scare" scenes, or scenes where the viewers empathy is attempting to be evoked. Laughter that is evoked for the right reasons results in someone enjoying a film, not getting up and walking out, which is what I witnessed many doing after having been laughing just moments before.

Fysh · 16-07-2019 10:03am

Were there any scenes in particular that prompted laughter rather than the desired effect? I can see how that would throw things off alright, I've had similar reactions myself (a "tragic" suicide scene that was so overwrought that it came off as comical, for example), particularly if the audience around you is also responding in the same way.

santana75 · 16-07-2019 10:41am

I thought this film was profoundly disturbing. From the word go there was a sense of dread about the whole thing. Its a film I never want to see again but that said I thought the acting was very good, and not for one minute was I bored by it in any way. I would even say its a great movie, just a dark piece of work that is the anthesis of feel good.

johnny_ultimate · 16-07-2019 10:59pm

There’s a three-hour director’s cut premiering shortly in the US, so fingers crossed it gets a home release of some sort here. Would be quite keen to give it a look. Had a few issues with the pacing of act three, but would still think there’s lots of room for wild tangents or more work to build on the film’s magnificent atmosphere

https://twitter.com/filmlinc/status/1151198845554106370?s=21

RickBlaine · 16-07-2019 11:41pm

Midsommar reminded me of another rural Swedish set horror movie from a few years ago called The Ritual. I saw it when it was released and I would have bet money that it starred Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan but I am remembering incorrectly. Neither actor is in it. I think I am getting mixed up with The World's End.

El Duda · 19-07-2019 2:35pm

Midsommar – 8.5/10

A tough one to rate, as no one can really say they ‘enjoyed’ it. All I knew was that it was the follow up to Hereditary and it was set at a Swedish ‘festival’, filmed mostly in broad daylight. The trailer evokes Wickerman vibes and promised to be demented and weird. It delivered.

Compared to Hereditary, this doesn’t try to hide anything from you. There’s no ambiguity. No twists and very little in the way of shock revelation. It broods up an atmosphere of dread and you can feel everything that is about to happen. One of Hereditary’s big downfalls was that it came across as though Ari Aster thought he was being clever, with a ‘twist’ that was telegraphed so clearly, it was almost insulting. I liked how he dropped the pretence and just went fully balls out mental here.

It touches on the same theme of grief and throws some family/friend/relationship dynamic problems in there as well. Another similarity with Aster’s first feature is a strong central performance from a female lead. Florence Pugh picking up where Toni Collette left off with a commanding and stressful performance. Aster seems to be great at pushing the actors to extremes and conjuring deeply authentic moments of despair.
I appreciated that there was a bit of levity thrown in. Will Poulter did a great job of reminding me just how awful magic mushrooms are whilst Jack Reynor plays a top-class, piece of **** boyfriend, without resorting to tired clichés.

Fun for all the family and possibly my film of the year so far.

21-07-2019 1:31am

Fysh wrote: »

Were there any scenes in particular that prompted laughter rather than the desired effect? I can see how that would throw things off alright, I've had similar reactions myself (a "tragic" suicide scene that was so overwrought that it came off as comical, for example), particularly if the audience around you is also responding in the same way.

The big scene with the redhead towards the end had us all laughing in a wtf kind of way.

Hands down the most bizarre movie I've ever seen... But it was so very well done. The shots with the mirrors at the start. The acting. Very well done

RasTa · 21-07-2019 8:25pm

Enjoyable romp. Haven't seen his first one so will go and see.

Also Will Poulter did a god job of reminding me how fun shrooms are!

yerwanthere123 · 26-09-2019 2:17am

Didn't enjoy this at all I'm afraid. I don't mind slow burners but this took the piss. I didn't feel the payoff was in any way worth the wait and once we hit the hour and a half mark I couldn't wait for it to end. I liked Hereditary but I hated this.

4/10.

Sandor Clegane · 26-09-2019 10:12pm

Are subtitles needed for this?

Is there much Swedish dialect?

Birneybau · 28-09-2019 1:23am

Thoroughly enjoyed it over a bottle of wine tonight. Florence Pugh is a pure talent. I never took it all that seriously, amazing cinematography, sense of eeriness throughout, head filling sound design (listening through headphones).

Has become one of my friends' favourite films.

Smegging hell · 28-09-2019 5:07pm

Sandor Clegane wrote: »

Are subtitles needed for this?

Is there much Swedish dialect?

It's predominantly in English with only a few subtitled moments of Swedish dialogue.

Sandor Clegane · 28-09-2019 5:18pm

Smegging hell wrote: »

It's predominantly in English with only a few subtitled moments of Swedish dialogue.

So if I don't have subtitles it wont really affect my understanding of the plot etc...?

Reason I ask is I can't find any decent subtitle track for it.

Smegging hell · 30-09-2019 5:09pm

Sandor Clegane wrote: »

So if I don't have subtitles it wont really affect my understanding of the plot etc...?

Reason I ask is I can't find any decent subtitle track for it.

You will miss a minute or two but no major plot points IIRC. Most of the main characters are non-Swedish speaking Americans, and Swedish characters chiefly interact in English with them

Slydice · 01-11-2019 2:26am

Gave it a watch. Left wondering really just what has me so desensitised to these kinds of horror films.

What was impressive enough was the story, acting and directing was enough for the 2 hours 50 mins without needing to resort to quick and dirty horror stuff like *flash into terror* *flash away really quickly* moments.

Like they wanted you to just settle right into the film and take whatever you wanted from it.

Slydice · 01-11-2019 2:27am

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I was laughing at it pretty frequently, because it's a very funny film. Comedy is as essential an ingredient in Aster's freewheeling cocktail as any of the scares.

Phew!

rtron · 04-11-2019 1:39am

Anyone watched the Directors Cut version yet? Is there much more in it?

Slydice · 04-11-2019 1:55am

It's the version I watched. Not sure what extra was included.

Looking at this article, it sounds like small bits and one extra scene:
https://screenrant.com/midsommar-movie-directors-cut-new-scenes-meaning-explained/

The extra scene if I'm remembering the feeling correctly, introduced some doubt as to whether the commune would go out of their way to kill.

Midsommar (new movie from director of Hereditary)

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