Tag: Pawel Pogorzelski

Film Review: Midsommar

Summertime… and the living is… in doubt

Ari Aster's film Midsommar
Travelers arrive at the village of the Harga.

We all look to the light for safety, for warmth, for life. Filmmakers use light to communicate safety or victory, and definitely health. In almost every hospital scene, convalescing characters lie in a bed, tucked safely in sheets, looking out to friends and family, as if to say, “whew … I made it. I’m alive. I’m here,” Hospital sets usually include rejuvenating daytime light cascading in from expansive windows.

All the more impressive, then, that Ari Aster’s ambitious, perplexing, unrelenting film Midsommar uses, abuses, and undermines light, to prove that dread can build in any season, horror respects no clock, and terror can strike on the brightest of sunshiny days.

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Film Review: Hereditary

Family as the source of dread and horror

From left: Milly Shapiro as Charlie, Toni Collette as Annie, Gabriel Byrne as Steve, and Alex Wolff as Peter in Hereditary.

Families gather at a funeral home to say goodbye. Warm, soft waves of organ music bathe the viewing of an open casket that rests near a portrait of a smiling elderly woman. The reviewing line snakes away from the casket. Reverence, sorrow, and the beginnings of grief swirl around the gathered. A granddaughter named Charlie (Milly Shapiro) approaches the casket. Doubt and curiosity play on her face. She touches her grandmother’s body ever so slightly. No jumping, twitching, or ghostly images… nothing. As she begins to move away, however, she notices someone’s fingertips lightly spreading something on the lips of the deceased. She wonders if this is normal. She looks up, and catches the face of a man sitting behind the casket. A man with a strangely out of place smile on his lips. Her gaze lingers a beat too long on the man, then she moves off toward the rest of the ceremony. Continue reading “Film Review: Hereditary“