one of the best-looking bad movies I've ever seen

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2019)

One of the basic rules of storytelling is that nothing is truly engaging or compelling or scary if you don't care about the characters. Ari Aster is a brilliant visual stylist, but with Midsommar he utterly failed to develop believable characters and situations. Characters start out annoying and then don't really develop at all despite the extraordinary circumstances.. Everything that happened was pretty much locked into place as soon as they stepped onto the ceremonial grounds, so why all the half-assed subplots?
Hereditary also had that sense of watching the inevitable play out, but with that film you cared deeply about the family and were deeply horrified by what was being done to them. This was brightly colored and elegantly shot schlock.