With Love to Ari Aster...

Rating: 6/10 (11 July 2019)

If your characters are stupid, your movie is stupid. This I say to Ari Aster with all the love and hopefulness in my heart, as glad as I am that we have a high-minded director working today and elevating the horror genre to its potential. But, dude. NO ONE is sticking around after witnessing a ritual suicide, I'm sorry, but no amount of academic aspiration is gonna override basic survival instinct. And now I have to watch 2 more hours of filmmaker gymnastics attempting to justify our four friends waiting around to also be ritualistically murdered?? I'm willing to forgive an idiot character or two when the movie itself is campy and dumb, but Midsommar has all the trappings of quality. The punches don't land if the script is just weaving through generic horror-specific tropes to explain why the kids didn't all back away slowly while the swedes took a comically oversized sledgehammer to that septuagenarian's face and book it on foot to the nearest train station.
Don't mistake me, Ari's still at the top of my horror radar, and I eagerly await his next effort. But I might advise this: Ari, sir, please... there is no need to brutally execute a character's entire family in order for us to sympathize with them. Good lord. I mean, yeah, what a master stroke it was in Hereditary! Gut-wrenching! Shocking! A sudden blow to the face with a baseball bat the size of a telephone pole! But now I'm beginning to suspect that you carry a shallow bag of tricks, Ari. I will most likely check out if your next movie has yet another character bellowing unearthly sobs after an unimaginable tragedy. It's a bit of a bummer, man. And I'd be just as invested in Dani if, say, her boyfriend reluctantly invited her on this educational trip to the north after her dog grooming business went bust. Just brainstorming.
A final nitpicky note. And this goes for all filmmakers of any genre. Please, PLEASE refrain from ever again turning the camera upside down to express a sense of foreboding. Uh-oh! I think I get it! There's something sinister going on here! It's almost as if our characters' lives are about to be turned... UPSIDE DOWN. Ari Aster must be ripped because his hands are so heavy. (Nailed it.)
Anyway, 6/10 because I didn't hate it, but would also never recommend that anyone see it. Its overlong and a bit dull, and nowhere near as good as his previous film, watch that instead. I will say, I am thrilled by Mr. Aster's chosen niche of super-dark, ultraviolent witchcraft stories. More please, but plot a new course next time.