At its best this movie is "Manos: the hands of fate" done right. At its worst this is Mr. Aster replying with an agressive "challenge accepted" after watching that SNL skit on a hypothetically tongue-in-cheek Wes Anderson horror movie trailer. All in between this is many impressive factors for a horror movie. From the way it works as a spiritual sequel to Aster's Hereditary all throughout to the fact this is essentially an exemplary, if not pioneering, type of Epic Folk Horror, Mr. Aster stepped beyond his comfort zone enough to show in its two hour plus runtime. One could even argue that a fourth, if not a tenth, of this movie's total runtime counts as traditional horror (especially when it goes complete Wicker Man homage by the end). However, much like Bones and All, Midsommar bases itself less on those visceral aspects and more on as much the atmosphere of Sweden's serene landscapes as the extensive cultural knowledge of the premise, in a way that immerses yet never apporopriates, to transport us back into that 60-70s feel. In fact the tragedy of Dani's sister and her parents, interlaced with Pelle's relation to the incident, is what ultimately puts it on the same level as Hereditary as far as inspired repositories for horror go. Besides the fact Midsommar is rooted in reality it also points out how, as radically questionable as the Pagan festival is, the foreigners who disrespect it have proven to be the worst kind of reconstruction which the Cabin in the Woods deconstructed from the start. Meaning that for every attention to detail that is put to further the immersion in the movie's world there is just as much fleshed-out motives in the characters which eventually walk into their own trap-doors. But what ultimately works is the level of maturity the film went for even as it built up to its more grizzly moments. It knows we come in expecting the craziest thing for a horror movie set in Sweden.

It's almost as if it gives as much its characters as the audience a choice on whose shoes to put ourselves in: The locals or the foreigners.