TERROR IN A FOREIGN LAND...!

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2019)

Ari Aster's follow-up to last year's Hereditary comes in the form of this kin to films like The Wicker Man & White Dawn. A woman, played by Florence Pugh, has suffered a massive tragedy when her sister commits suicide taking her parents w/her when linked hoses filled w/carbon monoxide run throughout the family home. Already feeling somewhat of an emotional burden to her boyfriend, this turn of events does not bode this relationship well. The boyfriend invites her to a remote village in Sweden to participate in a summer festival along w/3 other college pals working on their theses. That her beau is already feeling pangs of break-up fuels the underlying tension already in the air when the activities take a turn from the quaint to the macabre. A sense of impending inevitability soon supplants the proceedings as each member of the foreign visitors disappear under mysterious circumstances leaving breadcrumbs towards an ending even Stevie Wonder can see coming. Aster has crafted the perfect antidote to the noisy, obnoxious shock-fests which frequently populate our multiplexes by asking his audiences to go along for a ride that may not be easy but imminently satisfying.