Overhyped and way too slow

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2020)

"Midsommar" is a 2019 horror thriller directed by Ari Aster starring Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor. The film company A24 has released a few hidden gems in the recent years and is becoming more and more popular as an independent film studio. Many of them even have come cult classics at times. While I've seen only a handful of them ("The Killing Of A Sacred Deer", "Ex Machina", "Locke" to name a few) there are countless other titles that still have my curiosity. Two of them are the features by promising novice film maker Ari Aster. Judging by what I've heard about them from several people they both have to be secret masterpieces. While I'm not yet able to judge it in the case of the director's directorial debut (it's up high on my watchlist!) I can tell that this film here ... is not. Yeah, you read correctly. As I said, my expectations were lifted extremely high after hearing it's supposed to be great, many even stating it's the new "The Wicker Man" (no opportunity to compare there, too), but it simple isn't. Back then I've seen the trailer for this film and thought I would be in for some grotesque psychological thriller that would haunt me days after the credits have rolled. The only feeling that still accompanies me is confusion, as I still try to figure out where the extreme hype results from. Before we get to this, let's start with something positive: Florence Pugh. Not only is she one of my favourite actors since I've seen here outstanding performance in "Little Women" she's also showing her extreme talent in here. She's one of the most promising newcomers and once again proves why and additionally, she's such a beauty to look at as well. The most important thing though is how he conveys her whole emotional range and acts so outstandingly with her facial expressions, but even with an absolutely charismatic and powerful lead actress it doesn't change the fact the the whole screenplay is a confusing mess. Firstly, I gulped when I saw the total runtime of roughly two and a half hours (the extended cut adding thirty minutes more, but I went with the first) and thought how it's supposed to stretch its decent yet pretty simple premise to a format like that. To be honest, I was expecting an extremely tardy narrative structure, but this film is more than a slow burner. This term wouldn't make it justice. It takes a lot of time to introduce us to the characters that (except for Dani) I couldn't quite find any form of connection to. If you have seen the film you'll know that it literally spends a lot of time to show how characters introduce themselves to each other. I mean, literally. I was wondering if anything particular would happen, but aside from a drug trip and the introduction of dozens of side characters there was nothing quite interesting happening. Not until one hour and four minutes into the film (I paused at that moment) where I could experience why it was almost rated NC-17 (and why it is rated 16 in Germany) and what would partly justify its label as a horror film. It's definitely gruesome brutality, but there where less than a handful of scenes with a similar brutality. Aside from them, there was basically nothing. From there on I tried to view it as some sort of psychological thriller instead and focussed on that aspect, but even that wasn't quite what the film was. That's what I slowly began to realise. It had severe tonal difficulties and had problems to settle for one kind of horror. There are notable works in the history of cinema that achieved to create a combination of several subgenres of horror, but this film definitely isn't one of them. Therefore, it's a messy mishmash of poorly elaborated approaches. It's lacks the scary atmosphere and some sort of unnerving tension to be a classic horror film, it lacks extremely bloody effects to be a gore gem and it is way too tame to be a packing psychological horror thriller. It tries to be all of it, but fails to be something memorable in the end. Instead it focuses on the traditions and the way of life of a Swedish village and their cult. It felt like it was giving away some hints to something more sinister, a devastatingly shocking final reveal, but it built up to nothing. Nothing outrageous. Nothing shocking. Nothing scandalous. Not even the actually well composed and moderately unnerving sound score or the hallucinatory cinematography couldn't quite bring me in any specific mood. I indeed understood the subtle metaphor of loss, grief and a form of catharsis interwoven with a relationship/breakup subplot, but it's nothing that made the experience any more entertaining. I gotta say, on a percentage basis I was more bored than actually having fun in any way. I probably lasted to the end, because of Pugh's simple presence and talent. All in all, this film is anything but the masterpiece many claim it to be and suffers from so many problems that made it impossible for me to fully enjoy it in any way, the center flaw being the painfully slow pace. I generally love slow burners, but in other cases they offer something then. This film doesn't. It rather loses itself in its details and wastes much of its time to try out several genres without settling for one in the end, what makes it a sloppy rather than deliberately constructed mess. What upsets me the most is that it had so much potential and had a few correct approaches, but in the end is neither scary nor gory, at most mildly disturbing. It's wonderful to look at, but absolutely not the genre redefining masterpiece it's claimed to be. It's more forgettable than iconic. I couldn't really say what's more exciting: This film or shopping at IKEA. I can tell you, one thing is overhyped as hell and shattered my high hopes to experience a modern horror classic. It's a "nej" from me.