Alright I started by giving this two stars. Because honestly I was angry. Midsommar starts of great, it has beautiful cinematography, a spellbinding performance of Florence Pugh and an interesting relationship drama. The first half or something I loved. It’s slow, funny but at the same time painful and it makes clear so many unfairness that shows through in how Dani is talked about by her boyfriend and his friends. But then the movie slowly starts to change. It firstly picks up some interesting stuff about close communities and radicalism, but then the rituals start and things start to get of the rails. It’s not the gore, I can deal with that and it is only there for a few shocking scenes, but at the same time the problem is the gore/shocking scenes. Or the horror elements, because they had to be there to make this a horror story, but they were so completely obvious and predictable the second half starts to drag. I actually think a bit more subtlety would’ve made this way scarier. But when things start to get real messy it waters down the social commentary. And I also felt Aster lost sight of what exactly his social commentary was, there is so much there that it says nothing in the end (okay that is a bit too drastic, but I do think it had way more potential of saying stuff that sticks with me). The same goes for the lore, I feel he threw in a bunch of rituals that would be cool but I didn’t really see it as a whole religion/lifestyle. It felt disjointed. But after thinking this over I’ve decided that while the second half might indeed be a two star, the first half is close to a four and that leads to a something 2,5ish. And well I have to give Aster some credit for the idea of shooting horror in the light, but honestly I wish I could’ve liked the exectution of that idea more.

Lists I made that feature this film:
2019 ranked