Midsommar
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Ari Aster
Screenplay: Ari Aster
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Will Poulter
Running Time: 147 minutes (theatrical cut); 171 minutes (director's cut)
Genre: Horror
This is one of the best and most beautiful horror films of recent times. American student Dani (Pugh) is traumatised when her sister kills herself and their parents. Dani's relationship with her boyfriend, Christian (Reynor) is already strained, and he in fact wants to break up with her, but can't in all conscience do so while she is going through so much pain, and so he reluctantly invites her on a trip with his friends to a remote commune in the Swedish countryside to attend a midsummer festival, which occurs only once every 90 years. However the charming festivities soon take on a darker hue.
This is a film where beauty and horror sit side by side. Rolling green fields and meadows, full, verdant trees and brightly coloured flowers, beautiful people in traditional costumes, alongside sudden bursts of shocking violence. The film moves slowly and deliberately building tension up over the course of it's run time. The group of friends have tensions right from the start, and the divisions increase in the commune. Dani is stricken with trauma, her boyfriend Christian is emotionally distant and given to impulsive decisions, their friend Josh (Harper) is a serious student who wants to use the midsummer festival for his anthropology thesis and their other friend Mark (Poulter) is boorish and disrespectful and out to get laid. Their friend Pelle (Blomgren) who grew up in the commune and is their guide obviously has feelings for Dani. The film uses a variety of stylish tricks. The images are manipulated to the point that they seem to move and breathe, and if you look carefully you can see such things as faces in the trees. It boasts some superb performances from the cast, particularly Florence Pugh who is absolutely incredible in the central role. Full of strange and often macabre imagery the violence is all the more disturbing for being so brief and sudden, and the fact that so much of it takes place in bright sunlight adds to the films power. This is a deeply weird, and surprisingly hypnotic film, which resonates for a long time afterwards, and possibly one of cinema's most beautiful nightmares.
Director: Ari Aster
Screenplay: Ari Aster
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Will Poulter
Running Time: 147 minutes (theatrical cut); 171 minutes (director's cut)
Genre: Horror
This is one of the best and most beautiful horror films of recent times. American student Dani (Pugh) is traumatised when her sister kills herself and their parents. Dani's relationship with her boyfriend, Christian (Reynor) is already strained, and he in fact wants to break up with her, but can't in all conscience do so while she is going through so much pain, and so he reluctantly invites her on a trip with his friends to a remote commune in the Swedish countryside to attend a midsummer festival, which occurs only once every 90 years. However the charming festivities soon take on a darker hue.
This is a film where beauty and horror sit side by side. Rolling green fields and meadows, full, verdant trees and brightly coloured flowers, beautiful people in traditional costumes, alongside sudden bursts of shocking violence. The film moves slowly and deliberately building tension up over the course of it's run time. The group of friends have tensions right from the start, and the divisions increase in the commune. Dani is stricken with trauma, her boyfriend Christian is emotionally distant and given to impulsive decisions, their friend Josh (Harper) is a serious student who wants to use the midsummer festival for his anthropology thesis and their other friend Mark (Poulter) is boorish and disrespectful and out to get laid. Their friend Pelle (Blomgren) who grew up in the commune and is their guide obviously has feelings for Dani. The film uses a variety of stylish tricks. The images are manipulated to the point that they seem to move and breathe, and if you look carefully you can see such things as faces in the trees. It boasts some superb performances from the cast, particularly Florence Pugh who is absolutely incredible in the central role. Full of strange and often macabre imagery the violence is all the more disturbing for being so brief and sudden, and the fact that so much of it takes place in bright sunlight adds to the films power. This is a deeply weird, and surprisingly hypnotic film, which resonates for a long time afterwards, and possibly one of cinema's most beautiful nightmares.
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