Perhaps The Strangest Movie Of 2019

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2020)

When the credits rolled on my "Midsommar" watching experience, my first thought was "that was the strangest movie I've seen in quite some time". I probably should not have been surprised, seeing as how this was director Ari Aster's next project after the equally quirky "Hereditary". While I can't go so far as to say that the strangeness of "Midsommar" made it one of my favorite films, I did--aside from one fatal flaw--enjoy the overall experience.
For a very basic overview, "Midsommar" sees young adult Dani (Florence Pugh) going through a hard time. Her entire family is destroyed by an incredibly traumatic event, and to top things off boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) is waffling within the relationship. Somewhat reluctantly, Christian and his fellow dissertation-searching friends invite Dani on their trip to Sweden to study Midsommar festivals. What they all find is an experience unlike anything that has ever been witnessed.
The setup in this film is generally very solid. The whole process sort of reminds me of films like "Get Out" or "Us", where the filmmakers do a great job of creating authentic characters while surrounding them with an air of mystery. In the journey to the actual festival, all the characters here seem like they could be playing out a very believable scenario, and that makes them ultra-relatable.
Once at the crazy Swedish festival, the film is sort of a combination of "The Village" and "The Wicker Man". While the proceedings start off as fairly innocuous, the bizarreness of the whole thing slowly unveils itself. Very well-paced in terms of not getting too crazy too fast, while also getting in enough scares/thrills to satisfy the audience.
A lot of praise so far, so why the seven-star rating? Because "Midsommar" suffers from one fatal flaw:
(Warning: Heavy spoilers ahead!)
This is very much a metaphor film. If taken literally, the events make very little sense. Only after looking at it from a certain lens do the pieces begin to fall into place. Essentially, the entire movie is Dani's grief experience of losing her family and then not being supported by her boyfriend. In order for that to "work", though, the film needed to make it more clear that Christian was indeed a dead-beat, lame partner. In all honesty, the down-to-earth quality of the character writing might have actually hurt the film in this regard, as I never got the sense that Christian was an out-and-out villain. As the film itself expressly states, "maybe Dani is being too clingy/needy?". While surely not ultra-supportive, I just never got that sense that Christian was the "big bad" here, and without that the overall metaphor (especially the ending) falls a bit flat.
Overall, though, "Midsommar" fascinated me enough for me to give it solid marks. The major misstep described above prevented me personally from totally buying in, but I can easily see others not having that problem (provided they recognize it for the metaphor journey that it is, of course).