Midsommar is the latest horror film from Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, which starred Toni Collette and was a sensation. That was a domestic, claustrophobic scenario packed with jump scares — well, jump-ish scares; I wasn’t that scared, actually — whereas this is pastoral and relies more on building a quiet dread. It’s set in the remote countryside where a pagan community has its own superstitions and rituals and ‘elders’ and a maypole — and they are never good news, maypoles. This is clever and gripping in its own right, but it is also familiar and will certainly put you in mind of The Wicker Man. That is, the 1973 original, not the 2006 remake starring a deranged Nicolas Cage jump-kicking women in the throat, which we will never talk of again. I regret even bringing it up.
The film stars the magnificent Florence Pugh as Dani, who is grief-stricken — a prologue at the outset neatly shows us how she was traumatised — and clings to Christian (Jack Reynor), the boyfriend who is bad for her.
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