Ten Days of Terror!: Midsommar

Film: Midsommar
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin' flatscreen.

On my recent visit to Rockford, I stopped by one of the branches of the library to see what they had and was pleasantly surprised to find a copy of Midsommar. I’d heard about the film, of course, both good and bad, and assumed that, since it was mostly good, that it will appear on the next iteration of the They Shoot Zombies list. Nothing like knocking something out ahead of time, right?

Anyway, Midsommar stars a bunch of people I don’t know and Florence Pugh, who I like quite a bit. The box art (and the best-known poster) features Pugh wearing a floral crown and crying. Based on that, I figured we were going to be looking at something along the lines of The Wicker Man, and there are certainly some real similarities here. Midsommar is ethnographic horror in the same way as The Wicker Man, or films like The Green Inferno or even Cannibal Holocaust. What we’re getting is the horror of a culture, and specifically the horror that stems from the beliefs of that culture.

Wednesday Horror: Hereditary

Film: Hereditary
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I admit that sometimes I have trouble getting through a movie on a first try. Hereditary was that movie for me until a few days ago. It wasn’t fear, but a realization of a particular scene that I knew was coming up. Suffice it to say that I have real issues with cruelty happening to children in a lot of films. I don’t know if this is simple empathy or because I am a parent, but when I know something terrible is going to happen to a child, I frequently balk.

However, I recently had the house to myself, and knowing that Hereditary is the sort of film that would force me to kick the rest of my family out of the living room for a couple of hours, I decided it was time to gut through the scene in question and watch the film. Frankly, I’m glad I did. It’s not a movie I would really want to watch again in the near future, but it’s strangely powerful and is an acting class from the entire cast, particularly Toni Collette. I say this with the caveat that I am a big Toni Collette fan.