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Midsommar

Started by St_Eddie, March 06, 2019, 03:54:42 PM

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Custard

Enjoyed this. Clearly a riff on The Wicker Man, but different enough to be it's own thing.

Florence Pugh was excellent, agreed she should be a big star. Been very good in the small amount of things I've seen her in.

Agreed also that it was at least 20 minutes too long, mind. Yet I'd still love to see the extended Director's Cut, so I'll just shut up

I think Hereditary was slightly better, but it's still a great one-two punch of horrors by yer man. His films look gorgeous too

4 maypoles

holyzombiejesus

Did you think the commune were responsible for the deaths of Pugh's family?

Custard

Yep. The cheeky sods!


kidsick5000

Florence Pugh taking that phonecall at the start is bloody magnificent.
Best part of the film. Aster knows how good it is too, holding the camera on her. No cuts and just brilliant.
I think she's going to be huge very soon thanks to Black Widow and Little Women.

holyzombiejesus

#95
.

Noodle Lizard

Hopefully this post stops hzj's from being "new" all the time.

Puce Moment

Started watching this yesterday to decide whether it is worth pursuing and already some nice extra material that I thought brought something new. I am happy to languish in this worls Aster has created so looking forward to viewing the whole thing.

Pseudopath

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on October 09, 2019, 12:48:39 PM
Did you think the commune were responsible for the deaths of Pugh's family?

I keep changing my mind on this. On one hand there are some obvious clues that they did it (there's a flower crown around the bedside photo of Dani in the scene where her parents are asleep and still breathing). However, I think I like Pelle too much as a character to think he might be complicit in those kinds of shenanigans.

Pseudopath

Quote from: kidsick5000 on October 09, 2019, 01:08:32 PM
Florence Pugh taking that phonecall at the start is bloody magnificent.

This. There's absolutely no chance she'll be nominated for any major acting awards for this performance (due to their snobbishness about "horror" films), but she is absolutely fucking brilliant.

Puce Moment

Quote from: Pseudopath on October 16, 2019, 10:39:29 PMI keep changing my mind on this. On one hand there are some obvious clues that they did it (there's a flower crown around the bedside photo of Dani in the scene where her parents are asleep and still breathing). However, I think I like Pelle too much as a character to think he might be complicit in those kinds of shenanigans.

There's also a half-baked theory that the parents were part of a sister cult, and fulfilled a desire to cast Pugh adrift so that she can be fully integrated into the Swedish cult. They killed their daughter and themselves.

This is all coming from the flower crown that you mentioned. Is it just foreshadowing and a nice little semitioc detail - or does it mean they are part of the cult? Or did Pelle do it all and leave it by the photo?

Probably none of the above.

purlieu

Finally seen this and thought it was really impressive. Absolutely beautifully shot throughout. Total agreement on the positive remarks about the hallucinogen scenes, played perfectly with the right amount of effects. There were many, many moments in it which really stuck in my mind, some very striking imagery and indeed sounds. My favourite was Dani's breakdown with the other women joining in: just a really strange and original moment. And yes, the sex scene was hilarious, not just the bum-pushing, but Christian's face when the older woman starts singing at them.

I'm not sure the 'recovery from grief' theme resolves in the most satisfying way, which would be my only real criticism of it. But Florence Pugh sells that grief incredibly, a truly astonishing performance.

Overall I thought it was far more interesting, visually and thematically, than Hereditary's 'family in a dark scary house' thing. Definitely looking forward to what he comes up with next.

mjwilson

Picked up the director's cut today, just have to find a spare 4 and a half hours to watch it...

jobotic

Saw this last night at my local film club. Was beautiful, the soundtrack was superb and has been said before the vocal utterances of the villagers brilliant. Certain scenes like the meat and lungs moving were pretty freaky at the time, but mostly straight after watching I thought all the above, but also that didn't really amount to anything.

Come this  morning and I can't stop thinking about it and will watch it again.

dr_christian_troy

I saw this at the cinema and while it was beautifully shot, with a powerful soundtrack and with a few standout performances, as a horror it certainly served its purpose because it was so bleak that I had a severe panic attack moments after leaving the theatre.


joaquin closet

Did other people find it really really funny throughout? The awkwardness at the beginning, the Poulter stuff, the boyfriend tripping balls, the sex scene, the bear costume...

One of my favs of the year for sure.

jobotic

Yeah I found a lot of it funny at the time. But now I keep thinking about the unnerving bits and feeling a bit, um, unnerved, which I didn't so much whilst watching it.

In a perverse way I kind of hope Dani is happy there, but what was going on with all the flowers? Was she paralysed or restrained in there? She seemed to have trouble moving but maybe it was the weight of the flowers. And where were all the other dancing queens? That wasn't a once every ninety years thing, was it?

Jim Bob

Quote from: jobotic on November 13, 2019, 04:09:41 PM
...where were all the other dancing queens?

Out on a Friday night, when the lights are low, looking for a place to go.  After all, they're young and sweet, only seventeen, feeling the beat from the tambourine.

Quote from: jobotic on November 13, 2019, 04:09:41 PM
That wasn't a once every ninety years thing, was it?

I thought it was, but by the end of the film who the fuck knew anything anymore? (In a good way. I really liked it).

mjwilson

Quote from: jobotic on November 13, 2019, 04:09:41 PM
Yeah I found a lot of it funny at the time. But now I keep thinking about the unnerving bits and feeling a bit, um, unnerved, which I didn't so much whilst watching it.

In a perverse way I kind of hope Dani is happy there, but what was going on with all the flowers? Was she paralysed or restrained in there? She seemed to have trouble moving but maybe it was the weight of the flowers. And where were all the other dancing queens? That wasn't a once every ninety years thing, was it?

No I think that bit of the festival is every year. Same with the old people suicide.

jobotic

She's probably not going to make it to the next year then.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I finally watched this the other day and have mixed feelings, although I'm leaning towards thinking it might be a bit balls.

The cast were good. It probably goes without saying that Pugh is the standout. I've watched a bunch of stuff she's in lately and she's never less than excellent.

It was certainly gruesome at points, but not particularly scary. As I've probably said before, I think the atmospheric dread/anti jumpscare brand of horror is a bit of a swizz: David Lynch is a master of it, but anyone can stick some droning noise over slow tracking shots. This film almost seemed like a parody of that idea at points, with the soundtrack insisting that things are scary when nothing is actually happening. Maybe Aster is bravely breaking with convention, but there's a reason most horror films don't take place during the day.

Whether the film is anti Sweden/Europe is beside the point, I think. The film is basically saying, "people who aren't like you are evil" which is a bit of a dodgy message, regardless of which particular group is being othered.

Then again, it seems bizarrely common for people to ignore all the evil. I've seen a lot of folk calling the ending a happy one - taking Dani's smile literally at face value. A cult taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person is an interesting idea, but this all seemed too obvious from the get go. Maybe I'm just narrow minded, but the cult seemed very transparently manipulative. I didn't buy for a second that they were empathising with Dani - their screaming along with her seemed more like mockery, if anything. Much like the VVitch, I was left wondering when it was going to get to the fireworks factory. I guess the film raises the question of whether the drink spiking, brainwashing, murderous cult is really any worse that what we saw of life in America (with its bleak winter nights and psychiatric medications) but they're blatantly much fucking worse. The only time I thought there was any ambiguity was in the cliff scene. I was very disappointed that that arsehole Pelle didn't get his teeth kicked in.

Accurate though it may have been, I didn't think the drug scenes were particularly remarkable. They seemed pretty clichéd and unsubtle to me.

When the old woman walked behind Christian during the sex scene, did anyone else she was going to slip a finger up his arse?

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on February 07, 2020, 01:27:34 PM

Whether the film is anti Sweden/Europe is beside the point, I think. The film is basically saying, "people who aren't like you are evil" which is a bit of a dodgy message, regardless of which particular group is being othered.


I don't think it's saying that at all. It's cosmic justice, isn't it? It's about a bunch of (mostly) entitled tools approaching a culture they don't understand as little more than an exotic confection existing purely for their gratification, and about what the consequences of that might be. Consumer/consumed stuff. I think I already blathered on about how closely it resembles Hostel in that regard earlier in this thread, so I won't go over that again, but yeah, I think "people who aren't like you are evil" is the last thing it's saying.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

It might not have been the intention, but I'd say it's an unavoidable interpretation. If they had just stayed at home they'd have been fine.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Also, are brave British characters weren't cynical anthropologists and they still got horribly murdered. Dani is only spared because she was brainwashed into joining the cult. The others were doomed from the moment that git Pelle lured them there.

Noodle Lizard

I watched it again the other day as well. It's an odd one because I think there are a lot of things done really well in it, a lot of tasteful choices made and, like someone else said, a really good grasp on the unsettling/grotesque without dwelling on its "shock" value. Unfortunately, the screenplay is largely balls and I don't think it really has anything to say, despite trying hard to make you think it does.[nb]Someone earlier in the thread was saying that its commentary on the rise of right-wing extremism in Sweden was "clear and intentional" - where?[/nb] There are also no characters, really, just functional archetypes, and very little is done to subvert that. As a result, it can only ever pack a punch aesthetically and never emotionally - one of the lead characters is
Spoiler alert
sewn into a bear and burned alive
[close]
, but I can't imagine anyone cared other than to giggle or marvel at the grimness/silliness of it. Even the internal symbolism of her grieving her family's death is pretty murky by the end of it all.

I think it's better than Hereditary overall, but Aster's got a ways to go before he makes something approaching the sources he draws from. He's somewhere on the right track, I suppose, he's young still.

chveik

I wouldn't bother looking for any kind of political message. it's just easier / more realistic to imagine a pagain cult being active in Sweden.

Noodle Lizard

Yeah, that didn't bother me at all (and we all saw what happened when they remade The Wicker Man off the coast of Washington State). I didn't feel there was anything especially xenophobic about it either, unless you think this kind of thing is actually prevalent in Scandinavian countries. We don't even see Sweden really, it has little relevance to the commune itself and I don't think anything about it is supposed to suggest this is what Europe is like. There's also far less (if any) notion that Europe is overrun with savage tribes, whereas setting a movie like this in parts of Africa or South America might leave a more bitter taste for that reason.

In theory the story could have taken place somewhere rural in the US, but it's historically and cinematically less believable, and I think the language and cultural barrier adds to the alienation the characters (and audience) feel. Yes, if they'd stayed home none of this would have happened, but there really isn't a horror movie you can't say that about ... except for home invasion movies I suppose.

Mister Six

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on February 07, 2020, 02:59:26 PM
I don't think it's saying that at all. It's cosmic justice, isn't it? It's about a bunch of (mostly) entitled tools approaching a culture they don't understand as little more than an exotic confection existing purely for their gratification, and about what the consequences of that might be.

Yeah it's the old Man Who Would be King "arrogant whites come a cropper due to nasty natives" trope, transplanted (like Netflix movie The Ritual) to a homogeneously white country to skirt accusations of racism. Not that I have a problem with any of that, mind you.

Annie Labuntur

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on February 07, 2020, 07:20:19 PMAs a result, it can only ever pack a punch aesthetically and never emotionally - one of the lead characters is
Spoiler alert
sewn into a bear and burned alive
[close]
, but I can't imagine anyone cared other than to giggle or marvel at the grimness/silliness of it.

I'm probably the millionth person to say this, but this is what I thought of at the time:


Also, there's no way the old
Spoiler alert
cliff suicide chap going "ooh, me leg" would have survived that drop
[close]
, let alone been conscious.