Midsommar

A group of college kids go off to attend a pagan ceremony in Sweden, where everything goes exactly as you’d expect from a horror movie where someone updated a slasher script from 1987 with elements of a UK horror classic that doesn’t need to be mentioned in another Midsommar review. It’s the latest disappointing big deal from writer/director Ari Aster, after previously benefiting from how critics hadn’t seen any good Satanist movies before he broke out big at the Sundance Film Festival with 2018’s Hereditary. Aster once again has a few good ideas for some shocking moments, and looks to be more talented than Eli Roth because he can keep coming up with sharp emotional misdirection in his screenwriting. He also has a pretty strong sense of pacing – although a few random early kills would help lessen the disappointment of Midsommar just being another dopey body-count movie. The good news is that Aster is insisting that this will be his final horror film for a while. Midsommar is stylish enough that fans can still expect something impressive now that he’s done posing as an innovative genre director.

[R]