Time - International (2019-07-08)

Time July 8, 2019

William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Pugh and Reynor: Let the grim games begin!

to breathe—it blinks at us lazily, like a

malevolent sea creature. Midsommar—

in places reminiscent of the 1973 British

horror classic The Wicker Man—is best

during these wild and spooky storybook

moments. Nature is all around, and it’s

not always your friend.

But Aster is obsessed with build-

ing tension to the point of losing the

plot. He can’t stop at merely glancing

or suggesting. Instead, he’s constantly

reminding us—with ominous refer-

ences to runes and sacred books, with

tastefully framed shots of a deformed

oracle who’s the product of incest,

with dialogue that tries in vain to make

you care about the travails of young,

self- absorbed academics—that this is

“smart” horror and not your run-of-the-

mill scare-fest. Pugh, who was so chill-

ingly blank and wonderful in William

Oldroyd’s 2016 revenge-of-the-wife

drama Lady Macbeth, gives a sturdy

performance, but she’s lost in the midst

of Aster’s obsession with grisly Hiero-

nymus Bosch–tinged tableaux and

icky, smashed skulls à la Francis Bacon.

There’s also some decidedly unsexy ritu-

alistic sex, as naked old people look on.

Enter the love shack at your own risk. •

Hell is oTHer people’s cusToms.
That could be the tagline for Ari Aster’s
terror-round-the- maypole dread-fest
Midsommar, if the movie had even the
remotest sense of humor about itself.
Dani (Florence Pugh), a young psychol-
ogy student who has just lost her sister
and parents in a horrific incident, ac-
cepts a reluctant invitation from her
loser boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor)
to join him on the trip to Sweden he’s
about to undertake with some buds
from his graduate program. One of the
guys, the excessively mild- mannered
Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), has invited
the group specifically to observe a tra-
ditional midsummer celebration hosted
by the people of the small, cloistered
community in which he was raised.
There will be flowers, singing, men
and women in white robes, and filleted
human corpses flopping about. Skal!
Midsommar is Aster’s follow-up to
his 2018 grief-a-go-go art-horror exer-
cise Hereditary—and beware the film-
maker who’s exercising, when just mak-
ing films will do. Aster has some good
ideas, and skill at bringing them to life
onscreen: there’s a flower crown, worn
by a fair maiden, whose blossoms appear

TELEVISION

Florida Man’s

reckless

daughters

NesTled iN a coasTal Hol-

low between Tampa and

St. Petersburg, beachy Clear-

water, Fla., is known as a va-

cation destination. But it’s

the townies who dominate

Florida Girls, a Pop TV sit-

com whose creator-star Laura

Chinn is a local. Combining

elements of Claws, Trailer

Park Boys and the Florida

Man meme, this irreverent

look at working- class woman-

hood in Clearwater cements a

cable network best known for

airing Schitt’s Creek in the U.S.

as a destination for comedy.

Hardly Sex and the City

clones, the show’s foursome

of trailer- park roomies in-

cludes pugnacious alpha Kait-

lin (Heathers standout Mela-

nie Field), dopey Erica (Patty

Guggenheim) and Jayla (Laci

Mosley), who’s desperate to

impress her rich older beau.

Chinn’s Shelby is the ground-

ing influence, a bartender

who vows to get her GED after

their upwardly mobile fifth

friend flees Florida. Suffused

with raunchy humor—and

enough warmth to ensure

we’re laughing with the char-

acters more than at them—

Florida Girls is among the

most enjoyable shows of the

summer. —Judy BermaN

MOVIES

Sinister revelry reigns in Midsommar

By Stephanie Zacharek

TimeOff Reviews

MIDSOMMAR: A24; FLORIDA GIRLS: POP TV

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