"Okay, but I'm not an anthropologist, so I don't understand," - Dani,

-2019 Ranked: boxd.it/2lsbC

Honestly, this is why I've never trusted Swedish students to be allowed to recruit Americans for anything. We've seen this tale before.

After a traumatic event in her family, Dani joins her boyfriend and his bros on a trip to Sweden to participate in a very special summer festival. What follows are a number of derivative tropes that many non-horror fans won't notice are close to recycled parts from "lesser" horror films. The movie is pretty good but I'm a little disappointed. I will watch again Friday with a buddy to see if I like it a little bit more.

Midsommar looks great, you want to be there but you don't if you know what I mean. Florence Pugh does a really wonderful job with an incredibly tough role, everyone else is fine. The score is just as high pitched stringsy escalation as you can get. The stares are very looooooonnnnnng and the shots are loooooooooonnnnng. I think I mentioned this as a general thing that is starting to annoy me about films that are supposed to be "better" and "more original" and "not cash grabs." Specifically, that you could cut 30-40 minutes of staring and shots of non-moving objects and still have a nice slow-paced movie that is an hour and fifty minutes long, which is still long. At one point I counted and they spent 16 seconds just on a shot of a house and then cut to the next part. That is not fucking art. Lingering on a shot should say something don't you think? Do something? Mean something? I'm all for lingering on things but these are motion pictures right, not just pictures?

Sure go see it, you won't be disappointed. I'm still going going to see it again but honestly it's a little like Ari Aster doing an impression of Eli Roth and hoping his friends have never seen Eli Roth's films.

P.S. People who complain about endings being predictable and don't know that this ending is predictable are very predictable people.