Movies: Midsommar (Ari Aster)

[PeterSidorkiewicz]

Saw it this weekend and was super super excited to watch it. My random thoughts:

-My GF loved it, I disliked it.

-I will say one thing though, the cinematography was fantastic and was really well shot.

-I love horror movies, but horror movies clocking in at 2.5 hours always make me a bit skeptical

-I didn't find this movie really that scary, or even really that disturbing. I really enjoyed the premise and thought a lot more could have been done with it. I think I found the opening incident the most disturbing.

-It was too long, I felt some stuff could have been made a bit shorter (the dancing to be may queen sequence)

-The overall premise I kind of liked, such as the main character and the decisions she ended up making were interesting, that was about it as far as my interest went.

-One random thought- the guy going in to take pictures of the book - he is presented as this scholarly PhD student, and he is breaking a huge rule of his agreement by taking pictures and that is something you don't do when working on a thesis. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief on that one. If it was the boyfriend doing this, then I would have believed it.

-My GF told me afterwards it was the same guy who did The Witch, I was unaware of that. I despised The Witch, it is seriously one of my most hated "horror" movies ever, at least newer ones anyway. So far he is 0 for 2 in my book, I still need to watch Hereditary.

-Overall score is 1.5/5 for me. I don't think I would ever watch this movie again. Did I overhype it in my head way too much? Possibly.

 

[Trap Jesus]

-My GF told me afterwards it was the same guy who did The Witch, I was unaware of that. I despised The Witch, it is seriously one of my most hated "horror" movies ever, at least newer ones anyway. So far he is 0 for 2 in my book, I still need to watch Hereditary.

The Witch was Robert Eggers, who has another horror movie out either the end of this year or next year called The Lighthouse. Everything I'm hearing about it has me anticipating it more than maybe any movie ever.

Midsommar was by Ari Aster, whose only other feature film was Hereditary. I think these two are easily the most interesting horror directors out there right now though. Very divisive though.

All 4 of these movies were/are distributed by A24 though. A lot of A24 movies are different in their own way, but there's just some intangible thing that seems to link a lot of them together and makes them feel similar in some way IMO.

 

[PeterSidorkiewicz]

The Witch was Robert Eggers, who has another horror movie out either the end of this year or next year called The Lighthouse. Everything I'm hearing about it has me anticipating it more than maybe any movie ever.

Midsommar was by Ari Aster, whose only other feature film was Hereditary. I think these two are easily the most interesting horror directors out there right now though. Very divisive though.

All 4 of these movies were/are distributed by A24 though. A lot of A24 movies are different in their own way, but there's just some intangible thing that seems to link a lot of them together and makes them feel similar in some way IMO.

Gotcha thanks. Those two films just haven't done it for me. I am curious what my one buddy thinks, as me and him are the horror film watchers of our group of friends. I believe he is seeing it tomorrow night.

 

[Hivemind]

The VVitch was garbage, and not made by Ari Aster.
Hereditary was a masterpiece.

 

[Hivemind]

Figured this has been out long enough to discuss openly (ie no spoiler tags). How do people feel about some of Ari Aster's tools that he used in both Hereditary and Midsommar? There were definitely some repeated tricks he pulled, and I'm trying to decide which are simply "calling cards" and which are crutches. In both movies he uses disability, both physical and mental, to make things unsettling. Not to mention his penchant to take that a step further and use actual disfigurement and the re-assembly of bodies as part of his ominous climaxes (and this has been touched on already in this thread a bit). But most of all, his very heavy use of foreshadowing, both through artwork/set pieces and dialogue. This is the one I want to talk about the most, as it was one of my favorite elements of Hereditary and one of the things that helped cement that movie in my mind. I still quite enjoyed it in Midsommar, but I couldn't silence the ping of "he did this last time too" in my mind. Basically everything in Hereditary is set-up earlier in the movie in some fashion (Paimon sigils, the group therapy session, phone calls about grave desecration, dialogue regarding Charlie's relationship with her mother, summoning circle on the floor, nut allergies, welcome mats, dioramas, etc). Some of it was rather obvious, some of it you only caught on re-watching. In Midsommar, Aster once again turned to both visual and dialogue foreshadowing, and it was even more blatant. As soon as I saw the "its kind of a love story" tapestry, it was painfully obvious that those events would unfold. Same with the artwork on the walls of the cabin, particularly the pieces they felt the need to focus on. And basically everything out of Pelle's mouth, particularly regarding his parents dying in a fire and the selection the May Queen. The Bear was very obviously a Chekhov's Gun, although the way it was used wasn't was I initially expected. Even the artwork in Dani's apartment before they left on the trip (and on which they place so much emphasis on allowing to linger on screen). I still very much enjoyed Midsommar and it's foreshadowing, but it felt somewhat more of a crutch in Midsommar than it did in Hereditary. Perhaps it would have been different had the movies been released in the opposite order, who knows.