Profound, Traumatic, Beautiful and Distressing

Rating: 9/10 (14 March 2020)

I am not one to generally leave reviews on here, yet in this case upon seeing so many 'low star' appraisals, I felt it necessary to give this film its due. Just to get it out of the way, as many here have expressed, this film is indeed beautifully shot and the acting, superb. Although it plays homage to certain classics to which it proceeds, the plots originality cannot be unfelt to even the most veteran film buff. The point of this review is to express not so much where this film triumphed or where it failed, but to impose on you an impression of how much this film deeply moved and disoriented me like non before it.
It is perhaps unfair to pigeonhole Midsommar into the genre of horror, even though this may be the genre by which the film most greatly lends itself. Although horrifying at times, the film provides a much deeper articulation into the human condition than the average, commercial horror film has been seen thus far to summon. I truly believe that this film can, and does, actually provide at best, a sense of deep transcendent catharsis for the viewer, or at least, provide some philosophical insights into the familiar, yet oft unexplored concept of suffering.
It appears that Midsommar, at heart, is a film which intends to traverse the landscape of trauma. Midsommar meanders unflinchingly between very real expressions trauma; such as death in the family, the feeling of true cosmic loneliness or the notion of being trapped in a state of existential inertia, without any external familiarity to be able to ground ones being. For me, viewing this film was akin to being in a prolonged and deeply challenging psychedelic experience. This film took me by the hand and guided me on a journey through profound and unrelenting feelings of dread, dysphoria and alienation. The daring vision to film this movie within the daytime, conveys the inexorable and anxiety-inducing notion that it will not be unknown monsters that will face us here, but the known and often shunned aspects of humanity to which one generally averts their gaze. This is where Midsommar brings forth its brilliance, it does not let the viewer avert their gaze for even a second, it forces the viewer to confront those shadowy aspects of self in which society and morality wish to protect them from. It asks us to question whether if you or I were born into a different society, perhaps even we could easily be persuaded to indulge in the actions of this society, and perhaps even... enjoy it?
Upon leaving the theatre, the whole audience was at a hush, my friend and I stepped outside, feeling at that moment that the would was unfamiliar to us, trust into a confrontation with reality comparable to depersonalisation. Very few films have left such an overwhelming feeling within me, some films did it for the better, some for the worse, yet this film left me feeling void. It left in me a desolate sense of the unknown and the unease to this day has been left unshaken. This is a film to be contemplated and treasured, to be viewed with reverence for its ability to give one an opportunity to truly feel certain extremes of the self, to which the mainstream cinema cannot generally provide. Must recommend.