Ari Aster makes a relationship falling apart painfully convincing inside an unnerving, sunlit folk horror. Florence Pugh gives the film its force, though the elaborate festivities run longer than they need to.
Midsommar is an unnerving, sometimes funny horror film whose strongest reason to watch is Florence Pugh. Ari Aster puts a grieving woman and her failing relationship inside a Swedish commune, then makes the welcome steadily more troubling. The daylight matters: there is no reassuring distinction between the hours when people socialise and the hours when a horror film gets down to business. We recommend it for that persistent discomfort, with a warning that 147 minutes gives the festivities rather more room than they need.
Dani needs more reassurance than Christian seems willing to give, and Florence Pugh makes that need uncomfortable to witness without making it contemptible. She lets the grief interrupt any possibility of enjoying the occasion; being somewhere pleasant cannot make it stop. We found her distress harder to watch than the gore. It is the effort of remaining among other people while feeling so isolated that got to us, and the performance keeps that loneliness present even when the ceremonies demand our attention.
Jack Reynor is effective as Christian because he does not make a bad boyfriend automatically fascinating. His lack of reassurance is ordinary enough to recognise, which makes Dani’s position more painful than a grand confrontation would. Around them, Ari Aster finds black comedy in the friction between the visitors and the people receiving them, with Will Poulter’s Mark helping to loosen the solemnity. Some of that humour is broad enough to interrupt the dread, but the film benefits from allowing us to laugh.
Pawel Pogorzelski’s cinematography makes the brightness oppressive without sacrificing the appeal of the place. We can see the village clearly and still struggle to judge it; those welcoming smiles do not settle anything. Henrik Svensson’s production design makes the commune convincing as somewhere people live, with customs that matter to them. The surroundings hold our attention, and the care given to the ceremonies makes the outsiders look unprepared, although occasionally we wish the film would spend less time asking us to inspect everything.
Lucian Johnston’s editing lets the discomfort accumulate, but the slow pace also makes the film’s intentions too easy to anticipate. Once the hospitality has begun to feel wrong, further reassurance from the hosts does not always make it more frightening. Bobby Krlic’s music helps hold the unease through these longer stretches, though it cannot make every pause necessary. There are stretches when we have understood the danger and are simply waiting for the visitors to catch up.
Ari Aster’s writing is less persuasive when it moves away from Dani. The other visitors too often seem to be there because a folk-horror story needs outsiders, and their responses can feel arranged to keep the festivities going. That weakness matters because the film asks us to take emotional injury seriously, then gives some of its people little emotional life. Florence Pugh prevents the central story from becoming merely another item on the programme, but she has more work to do than she should.
Within folk horror, the commune and its rituals are familiar territory; the film cannot depend on their presence alone to surprise us. What distinguishes Midsommar is the attention paid to Dani’s grief, and the discomfort of seeing communal warmth offered to someone who needs it badly. That makes the long stretches of ceremony worth sitting through, even when we can feel the film labouring. Choose it for a horror evening when there is time to be unsettled slowly, and do not expect the daylight to soften the experience.
