Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

You don't get it, man, it's a horror movie. It's supposed to be dumb.

good movie

I enjoyed it

but jed_ said you're wrong

And I'll never get over the shame of my rongness

It wasn't great but it was very good. Sorta like It Follows. It doesn't hold up to close scrutiny but I really liked the thrills.

The idea that a ritual could occur every 90 years is the stupidest thing I've encountered in any stupid movie script.

?????????????????????????????

EVER??

not even the stupidest thing about this great movie

The idea that a ritual could occur every 90 years is the stupidest thing I've encountered

I bet you hated Chrono Trigger then

would absolutely watch Ari Aster's Chrono Trigger

I know a ritual that occurs only once every 90 years YOU HAVING SEX ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

but jed_ said you're wrong

― muntjac wagner (Neanderthal),

I did?

What a bizarre gripe to have (xps to jed_)

the most nonsensical plot point of all time will always be the plot to Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd

I mean...fucking Signs...

dicks out for Halley's Comet 2061

clearly none of you have seen the life of david gale

a film that fairly dared you to see it

oh haha, I haven't, but I read the plot summary, and....you ain't wrong.

Oh come on, the most nonsensical plot point of all time is "Jaws 4: The Revenge," in which the vengeful shark (I assume not the same shark that blew up in the first movie, though who knows) now has a psychic link to the Brodys and follows the family from New England down to the Bahamas. And then when they get there they all get wasted and have this weird pagan sex ritual.

The people or the sharks?

All of them, together.

"It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all."

I worked for the sharks

I was determined to read this entire thread before commenting because I didn't want to just reiterate what others have said and also because I always think it's rude to just barge into a long thread you haven't read and just start pontificating. Which is why it took me a year to return to this thread and post something! There are some really great insights above, learned a lot from reading the whole thing. But I just re-watched and wanted to comment on a few things:

Maybe the most true-to-life depiction of the psilocybin experience I've seen on film
The whole 'I don't want to meet new people' is perfect psylocibin talk
― frame casual (dog latin), Monday, July 15, 2019 6:50 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is otm, and I agree that it’s the most accurate depiction of a trip I’ve seen on film. Now, I know nothing about making films, so for all I know this simulation of a drug high is to fledgling filmmakers what the “looper pedal” is to people who don’t know anything about guitar effects (“but there’s only one of her! How is she doing that?”) but I thought it was really well done.

I also thought to myself that all of them should have realized they were doomed at the antestuppa ceremony. No community would let outsiders see that, for fear of them fleeing and exposing them. You either die or you become a Horge!
― Fuck Trump, cops, and the CBP (Neanderthal), Sunday, July 21, 2019 3:58 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, to me this was obvious. Like there’s no way any of the outsiders would be permitted to leave after witnessing what they did, which is why at some point Pelle is like “sure, you guys can totally write your thesis about this place, go nuts,” because he knew there was no way they’d live to tell about what they saw.

I also want to echo the praise of the sound design. The way sound for Dani sort of gets kind of muffled and narrowed when the elderly woman jumps rang really true to me.

My other very unusual reaction to seeing this film was that I – again, a person who knows literally zero about filmmaking – feel this compulsion to want to EDIT the damn thing. Like, I feel like if you lost, say, 30 minutes of this film by omitting or abbreviating certain scenes that either went on too long or were gratuitous or excessive, it would be a much better film. Many of you have mentioned the recurring shots of the smashed faces, and this is a great example, but I also feel like one or two shots (maybe through the crack in the door?) of the, err, fertility ritual would have sufficed. I've never had this kind of reaction to a movie before: not "this should have been edited better," but "I want to edit this into my perfect version of the film."

Anyway I think I’m ready to finally see Hereditary now

It is a better film imo

rewatched this last night. really held up.

- Christian's low-key obnoxiousness was felt much more strongly this time around. He's a true coward and there are very few scenes where he's not squirming around trying to cover his tracks, pass on blame, elide truth or just plain gaslighting Dani and his friends. Still, I don't know if he quite deserved to burn to death in a bear suit while physically drugged.

- The film never lets up, does it? Or at least for the first two-thirds. It's just relentlessly twisting and turning in terms of plot, mood and style. The opening scenes are just so intense, truly upsetting. Then we actually get to the vilage and the mood lightens for just a short while as Will Poulter does the best depiction of someone on shrooms I've ever seen. In fact I'd maintain that these are the best screen portrayals of the psychedelics I've seen on screen.

- The ending could have been shorter. By the time the denouement plays out, the film's most shocking and arreasting scenes are long gone, and whatever's left feels relatively light, almost comic (in the darkest possible way). The communal singing and groaning, the bear suit - these are entertaining ideas but they elicit a morbid chuckle unlike the opening sequence and the cliff diving scenes which definitely don't. These final scenes feel like they're tipping ever so slightly into farce or a parody of folk horror.

- That said, I think complaints of the film containing too much foreshadowing is missing the point. Yes, it's obvious how this narrative arc is going to play out, but this is very much about the ride

- Despite my complaint that the film tips into farce towards the end, save for a few of Poulter's lines I seem to remember it being a lot funnier the first time around.

- Also, but what a great cast. Flo Pugh is obviously fantastic, but everyone else (including the bit-parts) are so perfectly acted. They didn't do enough with William Jackson Harper though.

I couldn't tell you Herediatry is a better film. It's really not.

i probably just repeated a lot of what i said the first time around there lol

the sounds throughout the ending (the singing, groaning, screaming, crying) were super-intense in the theater - they didn't elicit any chuckles (from me)!

yeah, i was watching this on my beat-up TV this time around so the effect of some scenes was diminished

first time i saw it as at the cinema though

finally watching the director’s cut

this movie is so fucking amazing

Someone should tell those girls they're walkin stupid

lmao

I feel like I wast a whole genre of this movie.

Midsummer
Og Wicker Man

Yesterday I randomly remembered the scene where the kids are watching a DVD of Austin Powers and started lmfao in a hotel lobby

Someone tell those girls they're walking stupid

lol i just came here to post “somebody should tell these girls they’re walking stupid”

So I guess the streaming version retains the brief mention of Austin Powers by one of the adult villagers, but omits the payoff several scenes later where we actually do see the kids watching it :'(

I watched it with my gf, a horror movie non-enjoyer who had avoided it since it came out but knew a lot of the memes. She liked it, but disagreed with all of my takes (Christian is the worst imaginable boyfriend; Dani finds real connection and heals from her trauma; the sex scene is good and cool [tbh I didn't expect her to be on-board with this one but my first time sucked])

imo he sucks not because he's a bad boyfriend, but because he's an aggressively mediocre person who shouldn't even be her boyfriend by the time they leave for the trip. you can chalk part of it up to youth or inexperience, but continuing to be an aggressively terrible boyfriend is not being a better person than breaking up with your girlfriend who just went through the worst trauma of her life!

also he sucks in about four other ways

i mean my memory could be motheaten but i do not remember a scene in this movie where the kids are actually watching austin powers, just the line of dialogue about it

xp "Aggressively mediocre" is kind of an overused cliche, but I agree with its use here, because Christian's overriding motivation is to "not be a bad guy." It's the fear of getting blamed for stuff that animates him at the only points in the movie where he really seems actively engaged (Telling his bros that he invited Dani, "but she's not actually gonna come," and also he lied and told her the invitation was coming from them, so go along with it; telling the village elders that they are so sorry, but they have no idea where the sacred text disappeared to or where their missing friends are, and how he would hate to be associated with something Josh did)

I didn't think Christian was meant to be viewed as "a bad boyfriend" or "a bad person", but rather as a very generic dude who was completely incapable of dealing with a traumatised girlfriend.

The most moving scene in the film, to me, was the moment when the Swedes start screaming along with Dani's screams, sharing her pain. Exactly what a traumatised person needs! Share my fucking pain with me!

Also it's been mentioned elsewhere, but not here, and I think it's super-cool: the actor playing the ättestupa guy is Björn Andrésen, who played Tadzio in "Death And Venice", and was a secondary character in Roy Andersson's "En Kärlekshistoria". Cool bit of casting

The idea that the cult is pushing cinema's quintessential Ganymede off a cliff because he's gotten old is pretty delicious imo!

The most moving scene in the film, to me, was the moment when the Swedes start screaming along with Dani's screams, sharing her pain. Exactly what a traumatised person needs! Share my fucking pain with me!

that scene is certainly the most intense & moving scene, but to me there's a grotesquerie to it bc its clearly gaslighting. the reason she's in pain is because they, the people screaming with her, brutally tortured and murdered everyone else - they are definitely NOT sharing her pain except in the most superficial & manipulative way, trying to get her to accept her role in their cosmology - a role that they've forced her into because, again, they took away all her other options by brutally torturing and murdering everyone and made it clear that she cannot refuse and leave alive. shes presented with a false of a choice, theres always the specter of violence hovering.

i never understood people who dont feel like shes not still in acute danger at the ending. imho the gleeful horror-movie logic exhibited by the cult throughout the movie makes it seem perfectly likely that the next day or the day after next she could wake up and they'd be like "we worship and honor our May Queen who shall look down on us from the heavenly firmament, so we're going to cut your head off and put it up on this tall pole wheeee!!!!!" and i think she knows it at the end too.

Good posts itt. My gf said that once they got to the village she never stopped thinking "If I were in Dani's place how would I escape?" and I can understand viewing it that way (One Eye Open, it sounds like you had a similar perspective) but that could not be more different from my own experience. I was immediately plugged into the film on an affective level, and the vibes in the first half hour were so bad that "run away, go back to that" never entered my mind.

the reason she's in pain is because they, the people screaming with her, brutally tortured and murdered everyone else

it's been a while since i watched it, but i didn't read this scene that way at all. i thought she was letting out the pain rooted in the loss of her family that she had previously hid to avoid making others uncomfortable, e.g. in the airplane bathroom. i do think there was an underlying grotesquery in that the cult was being manipulative to connect with her, they had the one-sided knowledge given to them by the recruiter guy that she was deeply traumatized and alienated and therefore vulnerable to being recruited. and i never got the feeling they wanted to kill her, i thought they need to recruit people periodically to widen the gene pool