Midsommar (2019)

★★★★

(TW: suicide)

Spoilers are ridden throughout this review, so I recommend watching the movie before reading this.

This was quite a step from my horror movie comfort zone of slasher films and this is honestly a pretty good starter for psychological horror…it certainly was for me.

I get scared pretty easily. Do you guys remember that meme from a couple years back where that one guy would hack into your YouTube channel or something and it was made to scare small kids, Momo? I recently found that again while researching suicide cases for something I’m writing for my English class and I’m still quite shooketh. What fucking asshole came up with that? I was in Year 4. I was 9 years old. That shit hit me like a truck. I literally couldn’t sleep for weeks which is probably where my insomnia came from. Thanks Reddit, now I’m on 5mg of melatonin at the prime of my fucking youth. Children killed themselves over that and thank whatever God is up there I didn’t go further down the Reddit rabbit hole but anyway, the point stands. Psychological horror isn’t supposed to scare you, it’s supposed to unsettle you. And it does that very well…halfway into the movie.

One think I didn’t like was how. slow. moving. it was. Stuff definitely happens and I get that if it was shorter, nothing would make sense and there is a directors cut, I think, and I probably would have been better off watching that since my attention span is that of a goldfish on Lexapro but I didn’t. I watched the full 2 and a half hours and powered through the first hour, and I’m glad I did. You do feel like the main character Dani with the feeling of no escapism. You flew to Sweden, drove a four-hour drive, got drugged immediately and now what? Nothing. There’s no escape now. It’s a horrifying feeling and Ari Aster captures that well.

The gore in this movie, as well, is really good. Halfway into the movie, there is a ritual where the oldest people in the commune jump off of a fucking cliff and their bodies smush like clay…because it probably was clay. Tensions are high, especially with the people from London, Simon (god bless, rest in peace) and Connie which you feel in your bones, which I think captures a good horror movie.

The sex scene too is very uncomfortable; another thing that makes up a good horror movie. A girl from the commune, Maja, has her virginity taken by a drugged Christian and all the elder females circle around her, nude and mimic her moaning? It immediately makes you feel as though you’re watching something you shouldn’t be, especially when Dani sees this through a hole in the door and throws up. Coming from a person with emetophobia (fear of vomiting) I had to pause the movie and take a second. And when I got back, it only got worse, with all the other people mimicking Dani’s heaves and cries. Needless to say, I wasn’t sad when she chooses Christian to stuff in a gutted bear, and get burnt alive.

Yeah. This movie’s pretty fucked up.

Overall, I did enjoy this movie, and I’d definitely sit down and watch it again, which, in my books, makes it a pretty good movie.

My ask box is open if you would like to recommend other movies or shows for me to review!! Thank you for reading!

Barcode Wrists

Bee’s bedroom is a shrine. An altar to a boy in their life that lost grip. 

They wore the same My Chemical Romance hoodie, the same mustard yellow cargo pants, the same green zip-up Vans, all the way to the golden wire framed glasses. The only jewellery that they’ll wear is a dusty sage green amulet in a heart shape given to them by their lover. 

All of their possessions have to have a file, a strand of hair, a single trace of their lover. All are pinned up in their bedroom wall. Their tears have the essence of their lover locked inside. They buy all the same perfume of their lover and apply it on the time that they lost him.  

People asked Bee if they were okay for 2 years. They always say no and turn away. They cry themselves to sleep every night on their bloodstained sheets and remember the way that they used to kiss and the way that he reached across their ear and tucked his hair back. They would never forget. They paint their nails the same colour of the day that they were painted when they met their lover.

Their parents are concerned. They’ve tried talking, their mother cries when they’re out of the room, thinking she’s lost her baby. It’s not her fault, they think, but they won’t say it.

They sneak out of the house sit outside the hospital at the time they lost them every night. At the exact second that he died, they make a single 6 centimetre slit in their wrist with the pocket knife that got given to them as a gift by their lover as their mind races. 

Was it their fault?

Was it a suicide?

Was it something they couldn’t prevent at all?

So many questions, but no one will answer them. All they’re good for is being left unanswered and making them lose more control and more sanity. 

All they want to know is what happened. 

What happened to make their lover die.

Why. Why did he die?

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I'm on my bed with him on top of me, bearing a grin on his face. The long, blond tips of his hair tease my neck and I grunt helplessly. All of a sudden the world goes quiet and all the colour fades into monochromatic shades.

"Squirming makes it more difficult, sweetheart."

I miss the days when I enjoyed hearing his voice so amused, but now it makes me shudder.

"Please," I choke, His smile grins and all initial attraction I had is drained from his face. "Why did you do this to me?" 

While his smile drops, his eyes remain the same, with a psychopathic glint that only a fool like me would confuse for love. He leans down, his body pressed against mine, putting his mouth to my ear and with a voice as slick as blood and with a gun to my head, whispers:

"You did this to yourself."

The Bird

It was dead. No doubt about it. The limp and pink-tinged body contrasted with the red seeping blood dripping out his mouth. The feathers moved in harmony with the chews, terrified that they'd be the next to get eaten. He, in contrast to the bird, was unpredictable. Chasing them down, getting them in his hands and putting them out of the pure fear by biting its head off. You'd head a faint squawk followed by…nothing. He'd let people watch him, but no one tried pulling it out of his rabid mouth, anxious that they may be the trigger for him to move on to eating people instead.

"Oi! Hey, not the lawn, you idiot, NOT ON THE LAWN," the dog saw the old woman come out of the house in her dressing gown and slippers, left the carcass and scurried away, followed by the faint yells of dismay: "Oh, not on my garden! not on my garden…"

Him

She scuffs her feet on the asphalt, holding her hands and refusing to make eye contact by looking down. Finally, the words come out of her mouth. "I know who you pretend I am." They chuckle nervously and try to look into her eyes, but she looks away, "What do you mean, you know I love you, right?" "B-but…not as much as you love them…" "Oh, come on, you’re being ridiculous-" Finally she makes eye contact but instead of how she practiced this argument in her head filled with fire, her eyes are watery and about to burst, "Then why do you always dominate our conversations with the topic of him? Why do you talk online about him to your followers? Why do you hang out with him more than anyone else?!" "I see you at school all the time!"  "We have no subjects together, w-what do you mean?! Plus, you never talk to me!" They look scared but cover it with a mask of amusement, "Are you…are you jealous of him? That’s when she snaps; breaking down into tears and falling to the ground but when they try to help her up, she slaps them in the face, jumps up and screams, "How fucking dare you?! I loved you! And I thought you loved me!! But no, I guess it’s him! Him, him, him, he’s so nice, he’s so pretty, he's so funny, always him! Never me! Why did you lead me on? Why did you pretend you loved me? Why are you such a fucking shitty person?!" Now they’re crying, silently though. Listening to her fury-induced monologue. "I do love you…" But she looks them dead in the eyes, quivering with quiet rage, and says to them, deadpan and all initial attraction of them in her eyes vanishing, "No, you don’t. You love the idea of being loved by him. And you pretend that he's me."