“Midsommar” (2019) – A Sunlit Cult Trip That Leaves You With a Sunburn & an Identity Crisis

😐 2. Characters Who Are Painfully Oblivious

• Dani, our grieving lead, spirals into cult dynamics with all the self-awareness of a drunk aunt at a wedding. “Will you forgive me?” turns into “I want to help you sacrifice things.” She’s more device than person—her anguish is a plot tool, not a lived experience.

• Christian is the human equivalent of damp cardboard. He meanders through rituals with the commitment of someone who left their phone in the car and can’t be bothered to go get it.

• The Friends: Josh, Pelle, Mark—they’re each single-thread gags: the academic lesion, the eager insider recruit, the phone-addicted skeptic. None feel real; they just shuffle through the story to be Big Scared, Big Sacrificed, or Big Dumb.

When you can’t root for anyone or even feel annoyed by them, the horror loses traction—and you’re left watching day-long ceremonies instead of feeling unsettled.

⏳ 3. Plot That Moves at the Pace of a Funeral Drone

The Midsommar rituals unfold with the pacing of a slow-motion nature doc: sunrise song, goat ritual, maypole dance, psychedelic visions, institutionalized murder, veeery long dinner scene. The tension doesn’t build. Time doesn’t accelerate. Nothing shifts.
The “big reveal” about elder suicide? Okay. But once the parade of increasingly macabre ceremonies begins, the film essentially becomes a dodgeball of gathers: eat, grill, dance, sacri—naps. By the time it reaches its climax, your brain might be begging for a nap—again.

🗣 4. Dialogue That Reads Like a Reluctant Academic Dissertation

Lines like “This isn’t a cult; this is culture” attempt to pass as eerie insight, but sound more like half-baked liberal thesis statements read aloud by a hesitant undergrad. The friends poolside nit-pick, Pelle defends customs with forced sincerity, Dani mutters hysterical sadness—but none of it rises above plot obligation.
No startling monologues. No real emotional outbursts. Only the occasional shaky wail from Florence Pugh that keeps the runtime just long enough between daylight rituals.

🔆 5. Tone: Bright Enough to Give You Sun Stroke

Crucially, horror thrives in darkness and shadows. Midsommar throws that out the window and demands your dread under bright blond light. You spend the movie sweating in open fields, wondering when someone will crank the AC or throw a goat with big horns at your head. Instead: more chanting, more flower circles, more daylight.
Does it make the payoff—when heads explode—more shocking? No. It makes it feel like lunch break on acid with no fear, just a weird craving for air conditioning.

🎨 6. Visuals: Beautiful Photos That Feel Like Catalogs

Ari Aster & cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski craft glorious tableaux: symmetrical rituals, lush blossoms, haunting Swedish architecture. Each frame is a frame-worthy wallpaper for “Wellness Culture Monthly.” But beauty isn’t horror. They capture the aesthetic of a digital detox retreat—pastel sunsets, epic cornfields, Instagrammable grief masks.
Truth is, these visuals dazzle habitually—until you’re too exhausted by the monotony of bright fields and cult coherence to even appreciate them anymore.

💀 7. Rituals That Shock Less Than Bore

Those weird painful customs—tumbling blindfolded, giant bonfires, hallucinogenic funerary dinners—are meant to unsettle. But they’re staged so poetically, so slowly, you start roasting along. The vision sequence? Triptych of nightmares—cool. Then … walk around the village. Then … endless chanting. Could’ve cut ten minutes for more tension; instead, they expanded it like a slow water torture.
By the crazy, symbol-laden feast, you might be glancing at your watch, wondering if you’ve seen enough ear-splitting giggling or can we just get to the firepit already?

🧠 8. Themes That Circle Without Landing

How does grief warp community? What happens when suffering becomes ritual? Does tradition excuse horror? Your guess is as good as mine. The film flirts with these questions, then drifts, then repeats ceremonies.
The idea: trauma is vulnerable to cultish reinvention. But instead of introspection, you get pair-trading intimacy under LSD cocktails.
The payoff: Dani looks on in shock, then becomes queen of the weirdies. What’s that mean? Maybe she’s found purpose. More likely: she’s offered a lullaby with a weird eye.

🤷 9. Final Act That Misses Fire

Dani burns her boyfriend Christian at the edge of Druid pyres; she cries, he fries. Supposedly catharsis. But after 147 minutes of sunlit weirdness, you’re not feeling the vendetta. You’re feeling sunburn and an intense urge for a psychiatrist.
Did Christian deserve it? Sure. But does that make the execution impactful? No—just sterile, like a ritual roast turkey under fluorescent lights.
That final stare? Intended to be chilling. But you’ve been stared at by flowers, acolytes, and cheese-faced kids at least five times before. You don’t feel shock. You feel done.

😴 10. Final Verdict: Pretty Ineffective Cult Horror

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 sun bleached sacrifice masks

• Concept: Extraordinary.

• Characters: Blah.

• Plot: Tortuously slow.

• Dialogue: Academic white noise.

• Execution: Beautiful, but disables your fear receptors.

👀 TL;DR

Midsommar is a daylight nightmare dressed as a spa retreat for your brain. Stunning visuals, cultural ambiguity, and sunlight-washed cultism—but zero bite, zero grit, zero real horror. You won’t flee in terror, just quietly resign. Want unsettling? Try The Wicker Man. Want sunburn? Stay here under the Swedish sky.