The funniest sex scene ever filmed!

Rating: 7/10 (15 July 2019)

I blame my initial reaction to this film (I originally scored it a 1) on the totally inept criticism it has gotten in the press. The critics totally missed it. I love a good scare: "Les Diaboliques", "The Innocents", "An American Werewolf in London", "The Shining" "Psycho", "The Thing" (original version). But this is NOT a horror movie. It may, on the surface be considered a psychological thriller, more like "Se7en", "Mulholland Dr.", "Lost Highway", "The Wicker Man", all but the last I loved. Several critics seemed to be going in this direction, but even they didn't get it completely right, I don't think. With "Midsommar", when the movie was over and I was leaving the theater, I felt like I had wasted $11 (senior price) and 2 hrs and 20 minutes of my remaining life by seeing this movie. Some things in the film just ticked me off, as they would have in any movie: I don't like it when the director *manipulates* scenes--such as the camera angle going into the commune. "Hey, viewer, watch out, your world is going to be turned upside down now." Talk about telescoping an idea!! Could it have been motivated by a shot of the main character looking up through a sun roof in the car? Yeah. Maybe I missed it, but just flipping the view like that was intrusive--"Look at me, Mom. I got a camera for Christmas and look what I can do!" And if you're going to psychedelically CG a shot, focus it: the table spread at one of the dinners was magnificent, but the CG effect bled all over the screen: everything moved. It was distracting and pulled focus from the scene. And now I'll jump to some other silly stuff: in a ceremony that was supposed to be so revered and holy in that "culture", it is ended with a sledgehammer. Oh? Yeah, the director and writer(s) say it really was a custom in days of yore in Sverige. Ok, people have always been nutty all over the world. Welcome to Anthropology 101. But next: what the stupid set up for the bear just to be used that way in the end. Why? What was the connection? But the writer(s) did build that lack of motivation right into the script: one of the characters asks about the bear and a local says that he doesn't have the time to explain everything or want to. But without some connection, I felt that it would have been better if they had used an ass. That would have been more symbolically appropriate. But is that too much of a sledgehammer too? And that sex scene was absolutely the most ludicrous, gratuitous, but hilarious sex scenes I have ever seen. According to an interview with the director, it was supposed to objectify men, depict the vulnerability and ways used to portray women in horror films. But, hey, I counted about 12 pudenda and only 1 penis. So maybe this scene worked for the character (and the actor), but it was gratuitous for the audience, I felt. And when that one old Svenska assisted our hero in performing, I thought I'd lose it. I was the only person in the audience laughing out loud; others were sniggering, like they were embarrassed school children at the zoo watching animals copulating. Was this what the director wanted? I say YES! and he succeeded. So as I sat there I suddenly realized that I was not watching a horror film or a psychological thriller, but a black comedy. The critics had this movie all wrong. It was supposed to be funny, uncomfortably funny, laugh out loud funny at the absurdity of the whole thing. All cultures do stupid stuff. And then at the end, there's that big clump of May flowers with our heroine, the "May" Queen, peering out (uuuhhhh "midsommar"?) crawling in front of the camera in front of that burning building. Not only do the hills have eyes, but the flower arrangement walks and talks! She looked like the Duck Lady at the end of "Freaks" or a float in The Mummers' Parade (Philadelphia culture). And why does our heroine romp around the maypole like a native-born Swede? It's a ceremony to purge the psychological demons from her psyche. And what about all that angst and grief over her family? Listen to her wail to her boyfriend for consolation in the first part of the film. Remember it when she is joined by a chorus of women in the village at the end. The women begin by mimicking, it seems, her grief, but then genuinely join her. How wonderfully Euripidean. Only women can console this woman, more than that ass, I mean bear, of a boyfriend could. I therefore mistakenly hoped something would wipe that stupid expression off her face (see publicity photo of film). "Ah, Flo? Give me your best expression of Liebesschmerz. Great! Now hold it for half an hour or so." And the group's manic reaction at the end was a nice comment on bravado expressions of grief. It is therefore my plan NOT to read reviews ever again before I see a film. Had I gone in totally unaware of what the critics had said, I would have laughed my unprompted ass off and enjoyed the film. I probably would have scored it higher, but I didn't enjoy the film as much as I could have while it was happening because of the mis-advice. (And now I'll preach to the choir master: I aint gonna review no pictures no more. I'll take a bit of my own medicine, thank you very much.)