Title: “Midsommar”

Release date: July 3, 2019

Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgran, Will Poulter, Isabelle Grill, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Liv Mjones, Anna Astrom

Directed by: Ari Aster

Run time: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Rated: R

What it’s about: A group of young people travels to rural Sweden for a summer festival and finds themselves among a pagan cult.

How I saw it: Watch “Midsommar,” the sophomore effort by “Hereditary” writer/director Ari Aster, and you’ll likely leave the theater confused by everything you’ve witnessed. There’s much to like here, and a lot to not like so much. It’s a film that will have you rehashing it for days in your mind, and it’s fodder for great conversation. And it would seem capable of holding up to multiple viewings, but only if you have the stomach for it. It’s a horror movie, though not solely a horror movie, with a bit of complexity and symbolism and a slew of “WTF?” moments. It’s one of those films that seems to want to draw a line between “love it” and “hate it.” But you’ll have an opinion one way or the other.

“Midsommar,” perhaps even more than an in-broad-daylight horror story, is about a dysfunctional romance between a young, emotionally needy woman, Dani (Florence Pugh), and Christian (Jack Reynor), a heartless dude bro who is being urged by his college buddies (Williams Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgran, Will Poulter) to ditch Dani. But then unspeakable horror happens to Dani’s family, and she needs Christian even more than ever, even if he isn’t capable of being emotionally available. Unbeknownst to Dani, the guys are planning a summer retreat to rural Sweden, where they will attend a festival that happens only once every 90 years. Dani ends up tagging along, and her relationship with Christian deteriorates even more once the group finds itself in the midst of a pagan cult.

The wise thing for Dani and the boys to do would be to run at the first sign of trouble, but this being a horror movie, we know that’s not going to happen. Also, if you travel to a foreign land and are driven out to the middle of nowhere and don’t know what you’re getting into, at a time when you are emotionally unstable, maybe don’t indulge in hallucinogenic drugs. It can’t help. And it doesn’t as Dani, Christian and friends are sucked into the weird Swedish rituals and it becomes clear that the “Midsommar” festival is a lot like the Hotel California – you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Let’s look at the bad and then finish strong with the good:

THE BAD

• “Midsommar” is long (2 hours, 20 minutes) and it’s slow, and that makes it seem even longer than it is. Perhaps this is done to replicate the feel of a multi-day festival that takes place during a time of year in Sweden when there is little darkness and thus not much sense of time. Or maybe it’s just slow because that’s what artsy movies are supposed to do.
• Outside of Dani, the characters aren’t flushed out. Christian and Josh (William Jackson Harper) have a bit of a dispute and rivalry about a thesis paper, but that just leads to one plot point (and a ritualistic death). Will Poulter is clearly playing it over the top as the horned-up Mark, but his main purpose in the movie is to rattle off one-liners that are hit-and-miss funny (he makes a reference to Waco, Texas, that few under the age of 45 will get, and the main audience for this is well south of 45). Christian, Josh, Mark and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) are almost comically male and privileged. They are annoying, as is Dani, who, when she isn’t on the verge of an emotional breakdown, just gives Christian this weird glare when he is being inattentive and unsympathetic. Seemingly dozens of Swedish people dance around in robes and flowers, and they start to all seem alike, which might just be the point.
• The ending. Without giving all of it away, Christian meets a terrible fate (as do his buddies), one that is perhaps deserved or, depending on your view, perhaps excessive. Christian is by all accounts a terrible person and the worst boyfriend imaginable, but Dani could have left his awfulness behind long before getting on a plane to Sweden. It begs the question: What makes for a stronger woman – breaking free and going on with your life independently and then finding someone who really cares for you, or getting revenge in horrific fashion?

THE GOOD

• The “WTF?” moments. They are intense. And it’s not just the gore, which is brutal by mainstream movie release standards. When someone leaps off a cliff headfirst into rocks below, the results are not going to be pleasant. Nor are they when someone leaps off the same cliff feet-first into the rocks and then must be put out of their misery. Aster doesn’t shy away from showing the mangled bodies up-close. Just as unsettling are a dance marathon to determine the festival’s May Queen, with the participants drugged for good measure; and an orgy in which a drugged Christian has been brought in to impregnate a young village woman as several other women of various ages and body types stand and watch and even give Christian a hand, so to speak. Warning: “Midsommar” shows male full-frontal nudity in a couple of places.
• The cinematography (by Pawel Pogorzelski) is, if at times a bit showy, dazzling. A prologue that tells Dani’s story is so mesmerizing that you could forget how disturbing the content is. Part of the cliff scene is shot from above, giving us a sense of how high the cliff is and how isolated those on top of it are as they await their fate below. When the story shifts to Sweden, everything is awash in sunlit whites and yellows, and while that might not be the stuff of traditional horror stories, it adds to the unsettling feeling. Also, the festival is full of wide-open spaces, and if Alfred Hitchcock taught us anything in the famous airplane sequence in “North by Northwest,” open spaces leave little place for us to hide from the bad stuff.
• The score by the British artist known as The Haxan Cloak (Bobby Krlic). He mixes electronica with acoustic strings and other folksy sounds that perfectly complement the disturbing and yet often beautiful visuals.

My score: 77 out of 100

Should you see it? “Midsommar” is so spectacularly and interestingly shot that it deserves to be seen on a big screen. Whether or not you can stomach some of the content and can be patient enough to wait out a long, slow film is a matter of preference.