Pretty confident I can vote not crap without even seeing it but will see it soon.

The shocks were more traditional in Hereditary, but overall Midsommar is the better film. Definitely more cohesive, and really funny. Florence Pugh is great, William Jackson Harper is great, everyone is great, and the shots are just stunning - wide, fluid, dynamic. Impressive gore. It was great. Ari Aster did not come to play with you hoes.Not Crap

NOT CRAP.I don't say this about any movies ever, but the sound editing pulled me into this early on. Dani's anguished sobbing, the breeze passing by her during her first trip in Sweden, the empathetic breathing throughout. Incredible.Aster loves to balance on a tightrope between pits of uncomfortable, transgressive horror, and absurdist comedy, and sometimes I get pulled out of the scene a little bit (same with the climax of Hereditary), but it's all brilliantly executed.It's nice to have a version of The Wicker Man that doesn't kinda suck. (I don't mean the Cage remake--the original kinda sucks, despite being a classic! Or maybe it's just dated. It's not fucking scary, I know that much.)

It has something like the distinctive sad intensity of Hereditary at the beginning, but that peters out fast and it settles into a rut, especially character-wise. Some great stuff, some clumsy stuff. I enjoyed the hammer to the old man's face as a literalised metaphor for Ari Aster's crushingly middlebrow sensibility. Not crap, waffles because I don't have any strong feelings about it. I'd watch it again, wouldn't rule out changing my mind, possibly for the worse.

It was great. I totally recommend seeing it in the theater - I wouldn t wait for the DVD.

NOT CRAP. I thought it was just fine, but I wanted and expected to be way more into it.I loved Dani's arc, in addition to the atmosphere, performances, photography, production design, editing, effects, and sound design. It's a very well-made movie.It just didn't scare, surprise, or unnerve me at all. I could see all the moves. If you think you know what this movie's going to be, you're probably exactly right.

placeholder wrote:It just didn't scare, surprise, or unnerve me at all. I could see all the moves. If you would have asked me last month what is your main criteria for assessing a horror movie it would have been how effective and destroyed I would be from fright. I walked out of Midsommar thinking that I could not have been less scared by a movie, but feeling like I actually had been. I'm still wrestling with it because at its core horror needs to scare you. I want to be looking over my shoulder. I want a restless night's sleep. If I may, Ari Aster is redefining what the after-effects of horror can accomplish. I'm not entirely sure that I want that, but I'm impressed by his skill at it.Or it could be that Lake Mungo shattered my horror bone and I will never be frightened by a movie again.

NOT CRAP. I just caught up w/ Hereditary and liked it a lot, but this is a whole 'nother plane.Really cool article on the cinematography...honestly not sure I've seen another movie shot on location in so much daylight: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/midso ... 202155560/

Saw it yesterday. Thought it was great, as did my wife.

I don't know if it's a horror movie exactly. It's more like Ex Machina or something like that. Using horror tropes as a springboard--great horror is always about expressing the inexpressible darkness lurking at the heart of some human experience, and this one surely does do that much. The utter vapidity of modern life and society. Also how soft its (still real, still painful) violence and insanity really is compared any other period in history. The triviality of our ideas and sense of ourselves as individuals. How laughable it is that we "matter" the way we usually think of ourselves mattering.How culpable men are (and will be) in their own demise and what a reconfiguring (or a return to past configurations) looks like. The power of an idea and how seductive community is. Etc. You can take it as horror, you can take it as sort of a basic revenge fantasy, but you can also see all those other elements woven through it, expertly.It's a beautiful film, exceedingly well-done, a lot more depth than a typical horror movie. Or even other really good horror movies. Or really good other kinds of movies.The fact that it all takes place in broad daylight--genius.I've been thinking about it since I saw it yesterday, straight through. Rattling at a basic level, in a lot of subtle ways.