Author: TheAleosha

Midsommar does all the usual horror movie things: plenty of gore, cult village you cannot leave alive, bunch of outsiders (different clothing, speak English instead of Swedish) that get picked off one by one. Not much screamers, but they do have corpses that open their eyes. But it does a lot of things also differently.

Most things happen during daytime. Or, to be more precise, it’s hard to distinguish between day and night. I learned that there’s even a name for that: “daylight horror”.
Turns out that we watched the regular version, which is already 2:30 hours long. But I can’t complain: watched it in one go, and the amount of detail and characters do make up for the length.
There’s also a Director’s Cut, which is almost three hours.
Sharp transitions. Danni walks into a bathroom in Christians apartment, and she’s in the bathroom of the airplane. Josh is sitting at the table during day, then he’s sitting on his bed at night, thinking of sneaking into the temple.

Reflections. Danni sees a scary reflection after taking the mushroom tea. Josh sees the reflection of what he thinks is Mark. The table they use for celebrations is reflective.

Bear. There’s the bear poster, a live bear in the cage, bear in the Matron’s house, and of course the bear ending.

Distortions. When heroes take hallucionogenic mushrooms, viewers experience this as well, from a 3rd person view.

That goes with the 4th wall stares: different characters have that long stare into the camera, when there’s nothing for them to look at.

Things I didn’t get at all: Scissors under the pillow and inbread oracle.
Although maybe oracle supposted to be vague: can the Elders really interpret his drawings? Or are they just using him as an excuse to promote their own plans?

One thing that Director’s Cut explains, though, is why the British girl is shown drowned and in some kind of a fishnet with pictures in the last scenes of the movie.
There’s another scene, when a ritual of sacrifice to the river happens. And one of the boys is offered, wearing a fishnet (he is sacrificed to the water) and probably the most precious things (pictures of his relatives and child toys, I assume). Then the ritual is interrupted. Guess that’s because they found a replacement.

DRC was ruled between 71-97 by a dictator. Then from 2001-2019 there was a “President”. 2019 was the first time of peaceful transition of power.
Rwanda’s “President” rules since 2000, indefinitely.
In between those two countries, there’s the Virunga national park, protected by a bunch of dedicated rangers.
The most impressive part of this documentary is the undercover filming: Congo official trying to bribe the rangers, corporation mercenaries, sorry, contractors, discussing between themselves how Europe should recolonize Africa. What you get when you scratch the civility.

Very good character exposition. Notice how literally all of the characters are in the same scene, and each has a different pose that tells something about them.

The 3D elements are literally in the face.

There are some annoying screamers. But they got the atmosphere of Lovecraftian horror just right.

Moreover, the concept of a spaceship that traveled places and became a living organism is very W40K. Suprisingly, this is not even a coincidence, as the writer admitted he was inspired by W40K.

Second part of the movie does feel cramped. Guess that’s where they cut the 40 minutes out.