Good Atmosphere, Lackluster Characters

Rating: 7/10 (15 August 2019)

Midsommar is about a couple, who after having some turbulence in their relationship, travel with a group of friends to a festival in Sweden. When they find out they've entered cult territory, things soon turn ugly.
I enjoyed Midsommar. Definitely more than I enjoyed Hereditary, yet it didn't fulfill my expectations. The best thing it has going for it is it's atmosphere. The unnerving feeling of being stuck in this foreign place with strange people who have strange rituals will stay with you the entire time. A few scenes near the beginning are shot to make it look like an LSD trip. These are fairly accurate, though a psychedelic experience is impossible to replicate. These shots and the cinematography in general add to the atmosphere.
But the central focus of the picture is the relationship of the two main characters. Or at least that seems to be what the director was going for, but I think whereas in Hereditary he was great at building characters and their relationship to one another, here he falls short. There are only a couple scenes where the two argue with with each other and you don't get to know them that well in these. There was a clear effort to tie the shakiness of the relationship to the events that happen involving the cult, and to some extent it manages to do that, but many things are left ambiguous and it feels lazy.
Another issue I had was that the whole creepy cult cliche is just that-a predictable cliche. Pretty much everything you think is going to happen happens. The danger that the group of friends have put themselves in becomes more apparent as the film continues, "these people are dangerous", yada yada yada.
Regardless of the issues I had with it, I still give it props for managing to keep my eyes glued to the screen from start to finish. And I highly recommend watching this movie high.