An unclear film about a Swedish cult with strange traditions.

Rating: 3/10 (3 August 2019)

Midsommar is a new horror film directed and written by Ari Aster, the director of Hereditary.
In the film, Dani (Florence Pugh) decides after a family tragedy with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends to go on holiday to Sweden to deal with her tragedy and try to forget.
They travel to a remote Swedish village where the villagers celebrate a midsummer festival during the days where the sun keeps shining. The villagers invite their American guests to join in with their traditions.
For example, the group of friends starts celebrating the traditions where they first eat, dance and get high, but with the days the traditions of the village become darker and more bloody.
This film is unclear because, just like the characters in the film, you do not know what exactly the villagers are doing during their festival. With the many things that happen in the film, you as a viewer miss a form of explanation. The explanation you get in the film is conveyed in a way that is too unclear, so that you still do not understand everything clearly after the film ends. That is how some moments come across as comical
Another problem with the film is that it takes too long for the dark actions to start, because the first strange moment in the film only starts after about an hour. This is how the film actually starts with a lack of clarity and also at a slow pace.
This film also looks a lot like the film The Wicker Man from 1973 and because of the use of a bear in the film itself also something like the Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man. In these films, an outsider also comes into contact with a cult and their strange habits. With this film you only got a clearer explanation as to what exactly happened in the films.
Despite the film's unclear story, Ari Aster has portrayed the film in a beautiful way. Every scene is almost clear, because the sun never sets in the film. He also makes nice use of what the movie looks like when the characters are high or when they are drugged. The film sets are also beautifully decorated with drawings and paintings of the traditions of the Swedish sect and these images also give away a bit of what is going to happen in the film.
Unfortunately, lesser effects have also been used, because with the dead bodies in the film you can see that they are cheap fake dolls as they used in old slasher horror films in the 1980s.
Because the characters themselves do not know what exactly is happening, the actors also appear somewhat unclear in the film. Florence Pugh does good acting in the beginning after the family tragedy that her character is experiencing. Once in Sweden she comes along with the rest of the cast that the American teenagers play more confused about. Will Poulter knows how to create some comical moments in the film, but his character sometimes disappears and then comes back a while later with new comic comments.