Midsommar is a 2019 horror movie directed by Ari Aster starring Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor. It’s about a college student named Dani who travels to a Swedish midsummer festival with her boyfriend Christian and their friends. However, as the movie progresses it’s revealed that the festival is cultish and possibly dangerous. Overall, this movie isn’t all that scary, at least not to me. Midsommar is incredibly disturbing, however, it lacks a lot of the pure horror elements that Aster’s previous film, Hereditary, showed so excellently.

Midsommar is very unique as far as horror movies go, mainly because of it’s setting. It takes place in a remote Swedish village, and it used this setting to great effect, by having the villagers adopt barbaric and ancient traditions that date back to the Vikings. The history and cult aspect of this movie is interesting and well done, and it really makes this movie feel incredibly unique. Another very interesting aspect about this movie, is that it takes place almost entirely in the daytime. This is very strange as far as horror movies, as usually, they’re set at night.

Midsommar doesn’t go for traditional jump-scares or monsters like most horror movies. Instead, it opts for disturbing sequences or scenes. Hereditary also went for similar disturbing scenes, but unlike in Hereditary, which is a terrifying movie, Midsommar simply isn’t all that scary. It’s more uncomfortable than Hereditary to watch, as some scenes are arguably more disturbing than those in Hereditary, but there’s no real horror in Midsommar, at least not to me. I can’t quite figure out why. I think it’s becasue this movie never really speeds up in any sense. Hereditary was a slow movie too, but in certain scenes, when it wanted to scare the audience, it knew to speed up the pace. Midsommar really never does that. Because of that, it really doesn’t feel like a horror movie. That may be this movie’s biggest downfall. It succeeds more as a thriller than a traditional horror movie. And since it markets itself as the latter rather than the former, I found Midsommar a little disappointing.

However, this is still a good movie. It’s a little long, it’s a little silly, but it does have some truly disturbing imagery. For people looking for a pure horror movie, don’t watch this. Go watch Hereditary or Insidious. However, for the few viewers who actually like watching disturbing movies, you’ll love this. It’s just a pity this movie isn’t scarier, as the setting and historical elements really had a lot of potential for a great horror movie.