Ok look I know letterboxd isn't a blog but whatever, I got in a goddamn insane argument over this movie on Facebook and I've been laughing about it all morning so I'm gonna share it. I saw someone earnestly suggest that critics who didn't put Midsommar on their end-of-year/decade lists must not have seen it because it was a horror movie. I responded that I, while no critic, didn't like it much. Felt it was hollow and overly cruel Von Trier and Andersson pastiche. Thought that a movie that boils down to "kill your boyfriend for getting raped just liked your sister killed your family because of her bipolar disorder" offered a vulgar and weak understanding of relationships, trauma and mental health. Their response: not only does my claim that the film is Von Trier pastiche give Von Trier too much credit (which, I mean... ok, fair), there is "no cruelty" in Midsommar. I was unsure how to respond to the assertation that there's no cruelty in a movie where people get raped and sewn into bears and burned alive, so I chose to respond to the idea that Midsommar doesn't lift from Von Trier. This is, of course, completely and provably false, since Aster himself has said in interviews that this is his version of Dogville (a movie which, for all its faults, at least ends with the rape victim killing her rapists). I got no response to this, instead I'm told that "if [I] just swallowed up the movie's generic "horror" marketing tactic, I guess [I] could end up walking out of it pretty confused." Now, while I don't think it succeeds on any accounts, or that horror is a stranger to confronting tones and themes outside of the "generic horror" wheelhouse, I chose to play it safe- I said that I could see that this was not just a "generic horror narrative" (whatever that means), and I wasn't confused by it, I simply felt that Aster's usage of grief and trauma was overly simplistic and not based on any sort of reality. In response?

"well it's not a documentary lol"