They are playing "skin the fool."

Full disclosure, I did not think I was going to enjoy Midsommar as much as I did.  The trailer was vague and with a running tie of 148 minutes I thought, "not right now but someday."   All I knew about this movie was that it dealt with a crying flower girl with a very European group of people that were possibly in some sort of cult.  Lastly, I would see girls dressed up as the characters from Midsommar for Halloween parties and conventions and just thought it was a lazy, last minute, unimaginative  costume to wear. Although this has nothing to with the quality of the movie itself, I just really hate lazy ass "costumes" where people just wear basic clothes and a hat because the're too cool.  I miss the 80's.  I digress, back to this weird movie.

Perhaps weird is not the right adjective for this movie, let's go with unique.  This movie is unique which is a concept  I can get behind and appreciate.  It doesn't set up  the traditional horror format with monsters, gore or haunted things.  The beginning takes place in the US and has the protagonist's family being asphyxiated as she is having boyfriend problems.  Other than the family murder, the film continues as a drama.  Even as the group gets to Switzerland, it is a slow burn that has mushroom trips, friendly people and grass.  It's not until the dinner scene and then the cliff scene where the anticipation has been built enough to where you start wondering how these people are going to die.  It's obvious they're done but it keeps you guessing if they will be stabbed with the cutlery, poisoned by their drinks or bum rushed by the group.  Once they get to the cliff, you have a better idea of what's going to happen but you don't. See that big ass sledgehammer up top?  Imagine falling from a cliff onto a stone but you survive.  It takes a while to get here but once we arrive, it starts to feel like a horror film. 

This film definitely stands out from the rest and I would describe it as a Caucasian version of Get Out mixed with Hostel and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sprinkled with some elements from Tusk and Mask.  I like that it takes and reverses the tired trope of the "savage uncultured" tribe that tortures and kills the Anglo newbies.  One of the things this film does well is the ol' Hitchcock "show 'em but don't show it,"  For those of you that don't know I just made that term up. Still, it's based on the real method that Alfred Hitchcock used where he withheld showing gruesome things and your dumb brain fills in the blanks with worse things than he could show. Remember how you never saw the knife stab Janet Leigh in Psycho?  Examples of this in Midsommar include the off screen murders of everyone where you just see how they ended up; mutilated, bloated, skinned, with branches coming out of their holes you know, the usual. The worst in my opinion, was the period tea.  Barf.

This movie is also unique because I'm spoiled and I amazingly only have two small critiques.  First, it's not clear what the purpose was for showing the inbred kid the brief times they did.  It seemed like a waste of a good makeup job.  Secondly, bruh, it's almost a three hour movie.  As a filmmaker, I understand that the pacing had to be consistent for the duration of the movie which allowed for the exposition and character development to unfold naturally.  At the moment, I can't think of any scenes I would cut out without hurting the film in order to have a shorter running time. Overall, I enjoyed this movie and I learned that contrary to what video rental stores taught me, I should not judge horror movies based on their box art.  Wait, I guess the last critique I have that I just thought of is that this movie has ruined cinnamon tea for me.  Good lord.