I tend to shy away from really popular stuff at the time it is really popular (for instance, completely resisting the Downton Abbey and Mad Men crazes) which is why it's taken me so long to watch Ari Aster's Midsommar. I'm not going to talk about it much, other than it was well received and thoroughly discussed when it came out in 2019; if you want to dive deeper, there is plenty out there.
Dani (thoroughly inhabited by Florence Pugh), recovering from a horrific family tragedy, tags along with her self-absorbed boyfriend Christian and his three buddies on a trip to rural Sweden. One of the buddies, Pelle, has invited his friends to visit the commune where he grew up. Christian is full of white male privilege; Mark is an asshat; Josh is hoping to study the commune for his anthropology thesis. Dani is just trying to keep her shit together. She succeeds better than one might expect.
I'm not entirely convinced that Midsommar is a horror movie. It is beautifully shot, strikingly set designed and costumed (the flower work is amazing), slowly building claustrophobic tension in the never-ending daytime of northern Sweden - punctuated by startling and gruesome violence. It is perhaps overlong - there's a lot of time spent with the various escalating rituals - but it held my attention the whole time. I really liked this one.
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