hey hey thank fuck organised religious cults are only in fiction ha ha right *sweats*

The moments of physical action in this will have you drooling for what begs to be THE RAID meets THE WICKER MAN, but Evans is way more interested in a (very) slow to roll cult thriller. Extra points for not stringing you along with a "what's really going on here?" tease; this is very up-front even if it's 20 minutes too long. Anyway Evans can shoot the shit out of anything and this gets suitably gnarly when it counts.

first hour is kind of rough, lots of cliche characterization and ugly desaturated, handheld camera work (with no clear indication why its been shot this way until the last like 30m), but this hugely picks up around the time it goes full The Blood on Satan's Claw supernatural cult horror an hour in and then for some ungodly reason caps the whole thing off with 30m of "what if Witchfinder General was a torture porn movie?" unsure whether this is Actually Good or not but the bizarre whiplash of witnessing evans' paranoid, untethered photography and penchant for bonkers gruesomeness infect a 70s british folk horror locale in that finale was enough to get my lizard brain going and forget all the times actors opened their mouths in this. gotta be some value in that, right?

me: i just want the raid 3
gareth evans: fuck you

me: hehe look it’s matthew crawley! what’s matthew doing he—

dan stevens busting through the door and grabbing me by the throat: NO! NO! IT HAS BEEN SIX YEARS! I LOOK SO DIFFERENT! I DO HORROR THRILLERS NOW! IVE CHANGED

me: [spits in his face] HOW COULD YOU LEAVE LADY MARY ALL ON HER OWN 

I’m a big fan of slow, brooding, boring, period piece folk horror—rotting soil, vine blood goddess, Dan Stevens, bursts of violence, and an intense third act that sees Mark Lewis Jones channeling gonzo Oliver Reed.

I didn’t really care for either Raid movies, loved by many and that’s awesome, but this is way more my speed... I would have gone even higher but it was a tad long, even for me, purveyor of overlong slogs, but at least it didn’t put me to sleep like Hold the Dark did. When it comes down to it cults and a town covered in vines is just appealing to me? I dunno, I dug it.

I’ll gladly add this to my Folk Horror list.

This was precisely my cup of tea

Maybe I was too focused on the boy I watched this with but... I hated it

Generic white guy: can you stop like killing people
Lucy Boynton: yeah stop that
Michael Sheen: AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Different but this time evil generic white guy: I am going to publicly execute a child

Starts off strong, but wanes towards the last 20 minutes. Good cast, nice acting, has a few decent gore scenes, and it doesn't instantly reveal itself. Nice movie if you're hung over on a lazy saturday night.

movies that make you twitch, roll in you toes in fright and disgust, those are some good ass movies. this is one of those movies.

This movie could have been so much better. Religious cults provide a great starting point for an engaging horror movie, but this one lacks focus.

i wish this movie’d had more of an idea of what it wanted to be or do. i love me some weird folk horror, but i have my limits. i don’t need to see The Wicker Man But What If It Was Bone Tomahawk. i’m good. thank’s

Fairly terrifying and disturbing. The last hour is fucking crazy basically walking through room 237 mixed with that room in Saw.

What was she doing with the mirror? I must be dumb.

(Watched in 2 sittings)

Me: mum can we get midsommar

Mum: no we have midsommar at home 

Midsommar at home: