MIDSOMMAR: O MAL NÃO ESPERA A NOITE (MIDSOMMAR, USA, 2019) - It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, a crescendo of paranoid trippiness building to an uproarious gross-out in its final moments – of which the poster image, incidentally, gives you no clue. Once we are in that weirdly unreal Swedish clearing, the narrative turbulence clears and things appear initially as calm as a millpond. It helps create ambient disquiet. Midsommar combines mischief with a sensual surrender to fear and a dreamlike loosening of your grasp on reality. The Scandinavian setting gives hints of the various sacrificial moments. Some will be troubled by the excess in “Midsommar.” The unburdened surplus of lengthy customs does overshadow some of the film’s potentially ripe avenues of interest. For director Ari Aster, horror starts at home. It’s those closest to us that can inflict the deepest wounds. In his debut film Hereditary, released last year to both great acclaim and some healthy dissent, he dealt with the terrors of the family unit, where guilt and resentment have as powerful a sway as love. Yet he did so with the help of all things macabre – witches, ghosts, and demons – and crafted tableaux straight out of a waking nightmare. His follow-up, Midsommar, serves up much of the same: it’s a break-up movie wrapped up in pagan horror.
