Ari Aster is back with his Sophomore film, Midsommar, which tries to leave a chilling impression on its viewers but ends up boring them. I will start off by saying that I was not a fan of Ari Aster's first film, Hereditary, although I can understand why many enjoy these horror thrillers. They play out very much like a horror but do not use the well played out horror devices like jump scares and excessive gore. Aster employs suspense and puts you in the shoes of the naive chacters, not knowing what is going on. You have to play along with the characters in discovering the mystery. This is a great concept, however, the execution did not pay off. The almost 2 and a half hour movie starts off slow and does not accomplish any character developement to make you care if these people die later on. In trying to keep a mystery we are left with very shallow and underdeveloped characters going into a odd environment where we as the audience know something bad is going to happen even if we do not know what that is.
I will give credit to Aster in that his movie is very original and the setting of the Swedish midsommar festival is fun to explore. There are many scenes in this movie that I am sure will stick with the audience long after they see this movie but the movie overall does not leave much of an impression. I believe that horror movies need to work on solid storytelling and character development whether it is the main characters or the villians, both of which are lacking here.
