Midsommar - Review

Midsommar

Starring my favorite new actress Florence Pugh (2016 “Lady MacBeth” and 2019 “Fighting With My Family”) her latest project is called “Midsommar”. An apparent word twist on an actual event simply called “Midsummer” which is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening………………Yeah, but this film is not that.

In “Midsommar” we see Pugh play a character named “Dani”, an emotional wreck and justifiably so, but both a source of frustration and concern by her longtime boyfriend “Christian”. However, Christian’s friends don’t feel quite the same about her and urge him to dump her before they all venture off to Sweden to work on their PHD subjects with “Pelle” played by Vilhelm Blomgren. “Pelle” is a good friend of Christian's and his classmate who invites them all to his home in Sweden as a good source area to finishing their academic work.

Feeling depress, Dani invites herself to join Christian with his friends on their trip to an once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village.  But the carefree friendly summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a turn when the insular White toga wearing villagers invite their new guests to partake in some of the festivities that increasingly become disturbing.

REVIEW: In my many, many movie going experiences, there has been an occasion when I went into a theater to see some latest popular turn and instead of seeing something provocative or compelling I ended up experiencing a bat “S#!t”  crazy something totally hard to explain to anyone story. Previous similar movie experiences were the 1975 and it’s remake 2006 “The Wicker Man” and the more recent 2019 ‘Us”. But to their credits there was a bit of an effort of maintaining some reasonable chain of reality attached to the plot (for the most part). "Midsommar" starts out good with some similar based focus details but with a running time of 2:30 minutes it devolved into something far more sadistic and far more disturbing than the other two films. It's a mix of the Georgetown Jim Jones and Waco David Koresh massacres ……………minus the Kool Aid drinking and Koresh’s obsession with guns and him exclusively having sex with all of the females on his compound.

“Midsommar” failed for me as do other stylized films because the principles characters always seemed never to respond normally to the basic craziness happening around them…………aka like thinking about running the hell away,.......... running anywhere in the manner World Olympian champion sprinter Usain Bolt. Or just taking some minimum steps to calling the police authorities to investigate. Instead they unrealistically stay in the same bizarre environment only to continue to spiraling downward at their own clear peril.

I cannot reveal more. But oddly I am recommending everyone at some point should see this film, if for no other reason than the way the direction and writing keeps ad-hoc reimagining the strange events in a compelling and totally watchable way. But to what end? What greater purpose and value to those involved. BUT TO BE SURE, only watch it on free basic cable night in your home when it’s snowing outside and nothing else to do. That way when the film is over you don’t have that far to go to smoke some weed and have a few shots of bourbon to “etch a sketch”  this weird grisly want a be horror film trick out of your mind.

1.75 Stars