Herring-bone

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2019)

Ari Aster's second film, following last years "Hereditary", is another divisive movie that sits roughly in the horror genre, without ever really being scary and is probably going to bore as many people as it enthrals.
Dani (Florence Pugh) suffers a horrific family tragedy which encourages her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) to offer her the chance to join them on a trip to Sweden, to see a once in a lifetime festival on a remote agricultural commune. Dani's shaky relationship with Christian, coupled with the culture shock of this isolated community unsettles her but could darker forces be at work .
It's barely a spoiler to say, yes.... All is not what it seems in the idyllic village. You'll be able to predict the plot of "Midsommar" as it doesn't deviate very much from its template of a being a trippier version of "The Wicker Man". That isn't the point, there's a sense of inevitability about what happens and "Midsommar" is very happy about taking it's time to get there. This will, I'm sure, alienate some of the audience, it's a film about aesthetics and atmosphere, rather than twist and jumps, and I would understand anyone whose takeaway about the film was that they were bored.
A lot of credit need to go to the central performances of the leads. Though not expressly trying to, I am seeing everything that Florence Pugh is doing and I continue to be impressed with her versatility and vulnerability. Jack Reynor, who I'd previously only seen in the Transformers movie, is excellent too, fearless both in his willingness to do some of the scenes and to not try and redeem his character of his underlying resentment towards Dani. The cinematography is excellent, as is the use of sometimes subtle CGI to enhance backgrounds or illustrate the use of hallucinogenics.
Admittedly, the idea of sitting through it again doesn't seem particularly appealing now, which is why my review score isn't as glowing as it might have seemed from the comments so far, but I will keep my eyes open for Aster next film.