Brightly lit, underplayed, slow burn horror

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2020)

This is the first film I watched by this director. Having no expectations, and not having watched his previous debut film Hereditary, I was impressed with the skillful storytelling, the way the shots were staged, and the use of various cutaways and CGI effects to show the characters's states of trauma and drug induced disorientation. The cinematography and use of color is amazing, I believe filmed in Hungary but set in Sweden. The overexposure does lend itself to a feeling of being off kilter, as well as the smiling good humor of the Swedish commune, as they distribute unknown drugs and perform terrible and disturbing rituals. All of this is very numbing and a good kind of commentary to the tolerated unease in the relationship of the principal characters Dani and Christian, who are on the brink of break up.
The director has said the film Midsommar was a way of his trying to navigate the feelings of his break up. He has said there is no specific correlation but that he most identifies with Dani and that he has a lingering attachment to "dead things," perhaps meaning to dead relationships. He offers no further specifics, but watching the film you get a sense of how, perhaps, those in our collective ancestral past dealt with cycles of life and death, be it by ritual or sacrifice (extremely literal in this movie), and the kind of depth of emotion that goes with those ceremonies of beginnings and ends.
Midsommar is one part neurotic, hyper articulate and hyper aware relationship drama, portrayed very relatably, and then one part drugged out, mythical, pagan sunshine nightmare. It at times feels it's budget with some of its editing choices and choice of cast (familiar faces who don't quit gel together), but at other times it has the look and sound of incredible filmmaking, if very sparse in the absence of more sounds, and the gore it sometimes does show exorbitantly and then other times not at all.
Horror isn't my genre, but I admire this film for its originality and the type of catharsis it does begin to induce. I don't think it went quite all the way for me in this department. I was expecting more. This film probably needs a very specific audience. Please do appreciate it for its staging and cinematography in any case.