Midsommar

It’s impossible to watch Ari Aster’s pastoral/pagan horror film without recalling Robin Hardy’s 1973 mystery-thriller The Wicker Man. In what is almost a remake, the story revolves around traumatized Dani (Florence Pugh), who discovers that her bipolar sister murdered their parents and committed suicide. For years, Dani has been in a rocky relationship with self-absorbed Christian (Jack Reynor). When Christian’s Swedish pal Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) suggests they all visit the remote commune where he grew up to observe a once-in-a-century midsummer purification festival, they head off with some other grad school anthropologists to the picturesque village of Harga, which is filled with runic symbols that are stitched into costumes, intricately carved into wood/stone, and play a pivotal role in the feasts’ dining-table arrangement. Under the leadership of Siv (Gunnel Fred), the matriarch/officiant, Harga divides life into four 18-year divisions: childhood, pilgrimage, working, and elderhood. Hallucinogens are rampant here, and the unwitting “outsiders” experience gruesome horrors, while Dani is forced to make a dreadful choice. This malevolent melodrama’s ghoulish intensity owes a great deal to cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski and production designer Henrik Svensson. But it is a derivative film, filled with sinister, sadistic rituals. A movie that split critics, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. (S. Granger)