This movie is like tripping, there's no meaning, just experience.

Rating: 6/10 (9 April 2020)

I for a long time have been hearing about this movie, I knew people were receiving it with mixed feelings so I decided to see it for myself. At first I thought this was going to be a drama movie, trying to mix elements of horror with psychological themes - such as loss, depression - and more philosophical ones such as the cicle of life and finally death. The impression I'm left with after watching Midsommar is that either I totally missed the point of the story or that it had no point at all. I have no problems when movies turn out to be something totally different from what I expected, but I truly find it frustrating when you're left with nothing but a feeling of misunderstanding - but perhaps that's the very point of this movie.
Midsommar is a weird experience, maybe strong for the faint of heart, but at the same time quite predictable? It sounds like it tries to find the middle ground between horror tropes and left turns to shock the watcher. I did not find it disturbing, but that doesn't mean it fails to deliver the blows - they just don't really shock since they're to be expected. My conclusion is that what this movie might lack is substance and if the substance was meant to be found by the watcher then it fails, at least for me, to make the way visible. But like many of the weird experiences movies can bring, I find this one odd enough and probably nonsensical enough to be entertaining - it's one of those movies that forces you to find a meaning for its content, which can also be a deep flaw depending on the case.
To be fair I'm not sure if it tries to be deep or if it just embraces the very nature of the plot. Weird pagan rites engulfing the characters as the movie without a sense of directions engulfs the watcher. Weird experience, but also very slow and at times boring - when it is easy to see what's coming next the meantime is pure boredom. I don't find it ideal to be contemplating this movie to find a meaning, I'd rather try to see few individual meanings and symbols in some elements instead of trying to tie the dots - if that even is possible. If anything this movie makes me think of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but I'm not quite sure if they hold the same relevance in art - or maybe history will repeat itself and we'll see that this movie was something more than we see now.