Catharsis of grief, acceptance of death

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2020)

Funny how passionately so many hate this film. It is often a sign that it touched a nerve. This is not conventional horror, but it is horror. It is horror raised to a truly disturbing and horrific level. Like Hereditary, it touches on primal fears of insanity and death in the family, on modern society's lack of real communal support for those who are grieving, and the general selfishness and isolation fostered by a society that puts success above all else and has found nothing with which to replace the religion it has emasculated. In contrast we see a pagan cult in Sweden, which is fully, and horrifically, prepared to accept, even welcome death. However, through rituals based on unquestioning belief, it offers full support for its members - provided they don't go against the gods. While this cult is almost purely unpleasant at first view, it provides a form of catharsis, for the grieving heroine, who is confronted with two types of death: she recently lost her sister and parents, and is losing her boyfriend too. To the latter her catharsis takes the form of unintended revenge - so completely that you begin to wonder if she isn't dreaming the whole crazy story. Anyway, this film has a hypnotic pace, with an almost unbearable build up of dread before the arrival at the commune and the sacrifice of the aged couple. The nastiness that follows builds carefully towards the almost apocalyptic end - an apocalypse of these young people's assumptions and trust in reality and the fake safety net our modern world 'protects' us with. (The recent lockdowns during the epidemic have revealed just how thin and useless this net always was, and how our modern lifestyle has betrayed us. Not to say that the cult is an improvement: merely a horrific reminder of all we must repress. One can quibble that it is a bit similar to Hereditary - the grieving in isolation, the seeming invincibility of the cult, the doomed fate of (most of) the characters. Also some of the rituals did feel a bit like warm-ups in whacked out drama classes. Aside from that casting and acting work very well indeed, and this film is powerful, beautifully photographed, and impossible to forget.