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MIDSOMMAR
****
Dir: Ari Aster (15, 102mins)
Prepare to be creeped out once more by writer/director Ari Aster, who made the excellent and disturbing Hereditary. Channeling The Wicker Man, Midsommar follows Dani and Christian (the ever-great Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor), a couple whose relationship is on the rocks. Christian is on the verge of abandoning Dani to head to a possibly hedonistic Swedish festival that occurs every 90 years, but then she receives some terrible news and ends up accompanying Christian and his friends to get out from under her grief. One of those friends, Josh (Will Poulter), thinks it’s the wrong move but acquiesces. Initially, the festival is endlessly sunny, flowery and full of smiling Scandinavians dancing around poles and the like. But it also holds a darker secret, one into which the group of friends are inexorably drawn towards with nasty results. Cloaked in secrecy, the film has been described by its director as The Wizard of Oz for perverts and an apocalyptic breakup movie. Bathed in overexposed sunlight, this looks to bring the dread in the daylight after the shady goings on in Hereditary, as the bizarre competitive nature of the cult is revealed with bloody, disturbing results. Destined to have people peeking through fingers, Midsommar should be another nightmare-troubler from the newest purveyor of slowburn horror.
Opens July 5
words Keiron Self