Whatever you think of the end result, there’s always something thrilling about watching a young director who’s earned a long line of Hollywood credit decide to spend every last cent of it on a single film.
And writer-director Ari Aster has certainly done that with his “Hereditary” follow-up, “Midsommar.” Following a group of American grad students on a trip to a mysterious midnight sun festival in Sweden, Aster gives us a slow-burning, boldly-made meditation on grief and the disintegration of a relationship in the loose frame of a folk horror film, yet it struggles to break much new ground beneath its carnival of brightly lit grotesqueries.Never as impactful, as emotional, or as frightening as the director’s debut – nor nearly as much of a mindf–k as any of its most obvious precursors – “Midsommar” nonetheless seems engineered to draw fiercely polarized reactions.
In truth, it’s neither
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