Disappointingly Silly

Rating: 3/10 (13 October 2019)

Like 'Mother' and 'The Wicker Man' this sets itself up as a modern day strangers-in-a-strange-land fable, but unlike those two films the weirdness feels silly because it's trying to hard.
Florence Pugh's 'Dani' is about to be dumped by Jack Reynor's 'Christian', egged on by his friends who see her as being manipulatively needy; her sister has mental health issues and Dani is distraught when she can't be contacted, something that seems to happen regularly. This accomplishes two things: it provides us with an overcooked and unnecessarily long prologue; shows us Will Poulter can ham it up with the best of them, and Jack Reynor is working from a limited range of woodeness to emote from.
It's an undeniably pretty film in terms of visuals, there's something Wes Anderson about the composition and stylistic flourishes but none of the wit and humour. It drags. Things really begin when Dani and her companions travel to Sweden at the invitation of a friend to witness a Midsommar festival in a remote part of the country, apparently it only takes place every 90 years - although why is never fully explained.
Dani and her 'friends' witness some odd behaviour, but for the most part they carry on even when others disappear - because if they were wearing red shirts in a star trek film it wouldn't be more obvious that that was the only reason they were in the film. Other characters, like Will Poulter and William Jackson Harper, also do dumb stuff because they have to in order to move the 'plot' along. This is a story that is so desperately contrived that every dramatic turn is signposted so far in advance that it's a trudge waiting for the consequences to be delivered.
At two and a half hours it's far too much for Florenece Pugh to carry on her own. As good as she is in giving some emotional heft at the start of the film, that all dissipates rapidly once the dumbness of the middle act takes hold, and by the final act I didn't care about anyone involved.
A pity.