67
While Midsommar never bores or truly overstays its welcome, its languor wobbles into meandering tonal shifts, with unlikely intrusions of absurdist humor.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
It’s an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution.
50
None of its core characters, including the female protagonist (played by Florence Pugh, “Fighting With My Family”), make any rational decisions (while being too distant to care about anyway).
60
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The most ambitious horror blurs the line between the psychological and the mythic, between ordinary human emotions and symbol-laden Blakean nightmares, and Aster is very ambitious and very blurry.
75
This is the kind of mad science filmmaking worth rooting for: Aster refashions “The Wicker Man” as a perverse breakup movie, douses Swedish mythology in Bergmanesque despair, and sets the epic collage ablaze. He may not land every big swing, but the underlying vision is hard to shake even when it falters.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
More unsettling than frightening, it's still a trip worth taking.
75
Midsommar is a shocking piece of filmmaking—unnervingly competent even when the film yaws into silliness, even when it risks tedium. This film will alienate a lot of people (much like Hereditary, its audience exit polling is likely going to be abysmal), but there’s a wonderfully audacious confidence to the way Midsommar is built.
58
Admirable, ambitious and impressive, but ultimately aloof, Midsommar has its delights for sure, but it lacks the emotional depth to match the sharp insights it has into the evils of the ambivalent, wishy-washy relationship (run as fast as you can).
70
Screen International by Tim Grierson
Aster’s bold flourishes occasionally fall flat, but Florence Pugh holds the film together — especially when its plotting stumbles or its shocks grow predictable.