Review of Midsommar (2019)
Seen in 2021.
Two young anthropologists and their buddies, including a grieving girlfriend, visit a pagan commune in Hälsingland.
Physical disfigurement is featured here as a sign of evil. That’s a fallacy common in US horror, not an innovation. What does set this movie apart from its predecessors is that especially pale pinkish-beige Swedes take up other positions in the narrative formula that are normally held by people with darker skins or Eastern accents. The film is too long and never remotely scary, but I find it hilarious because it applies stereotypical horror-movie logic to my native culture.
Salted herring, Scandinavian Neopaganism and ättestupan (actually mentioned!) here fill slots that have previously been filled by voodoo, Islam, vampires, mummies and such. I applaud the effort to cleanse the othering (xenophobic) logic of its usual pro-white racism and attribute evil to pale people wearing white and dancing in bright light on green fields, but just removing racism doesn’t make the other parts scary.
I really like the use of long summer days for surrealism. I also like that the direction never falls all the way to kitsch or camp, despite being highly self-conscious at times. The special effects are reasonably tasteful; actually seeing the first body hitting the ground after falling from the implausibly shaped rock adds a lot to the scene.