Movie review by Greg Carlson

Marketed as “The Banana Splits Movie” even though the only onscreen titles stick with “The Banana Splits,” Danishka Esterhazy’s bottom-shelf slasher flick marks the first R-rated adaptation of a Hanna-Barbera property since the dawn of the brand more than 60 years ago. A brazen attempt to cash in on the curiosity of audience members old enough to have enjoyed any of the 31 episodes of “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” that debuted on NBC in 1968 and stretched until 1982 in syndicated reruns, the formulaic shocker is dispiritingly unintelligent and devoid of creative choices that might have successfully capitalized on the intriguing crossover of nostalgia-driven kiddie variety entertainment and the gruesome, Fangoria-ready prosthetic makeup and effects the movie offers in lieu of any characters motivated by logic or in possession of rich inner lives. 

Positioned as a metanarrative in which the Snorky-obsessed Harley (Finlay Wotjak-Hissong) celebrates his birthday with tickets to a Banana Splits taping, the principal plot sticks with a flaccid variation on the Old Dark House formula. Harley and his family, including devoted mom Beth (Dani Kind), impatient pop Mitch (Steve Williams), and sullen older half-brother Austin (Romeo Carere), are joined by Harley’s classmate Zoe (Maria Nash) as members of the live studio audience. Harley’s unfortunate timing coincides with the impending cancellation of the series — which has, in the movie’s universe, been running continuously for decades even though the single shabby set appears to have been stripped to its most barren look. 

Esterhazy’s direction is consistently flat and uninspired given the nonstop opportunities for twisted weirdness, but the failure of the film can be pinned almost entirely on the sawdust-packed script by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas (which has also taken plenty of heat for similarities to “Five Nights at Freddy’s”). The list of grievances is lengthy, but the nadir has to be the self-sabotage stitched into the furry personae of the Splits themselves. By imagining Fleegle, Drooper, Bingo, and Snorky as computer-programmed automatons instead of costumed actors, the viewer constantly wonders why none of the show’s superfans ever notice, question, or comment on it.

Homicidal maniacs concealed within markers of childhood joy, fun, and comfort are a longstanding narrative tradition stretching at least as far back as the delectable house of candy and confections in the Hansel and Gretel folktale popularized by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Earlier this year, a remake/reboot of “Child’s Play” — a far more satisfying experience than “The Banana Splits Movie,” by the way — traded on the very same themes. There is something wonderfully chaotic and subversive about the concept of TV show friends turned upside down, even if William Hanna and Joseph Barbera would certainly have detested the idea of the goofy animal rockers as flame, blade, and mallet-wielding monsters.   

One expects to see continued genre flipping, crossovers, and mashups in coming years as the corporate ownership of dormant but copyrighted media franchises offers the promise of a low-risk financial return-on-investment via some built-in consumer recognition. Many Hanna-Barbera properties, now owned by Time Warner, have received the treatment in comic book form since 2016, when DC launched the Hanna-Barbera Beyond concept attempting to freshen and update legacy characters including Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Fred Flintstone, Scooby-Doo, and others. The adjunct DC Meets Hanna-Barbera series, with inspired pairings like Aquaman and Jabberjaw, Superman and Top Cat, and Green Lantern and Huckleberry Hound, has one more remix you might like to investigate: the Banana Splits are recruited to rescue the Suicide Squad.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The Radio Silence creative team that includes directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett and producer Chad Villella mark a career highlight with “Ready or Not,” a rollicking horror-comedy that happens to be Fox Searchlight’s widest release to date. The movie’s thematic elasticity — which many critics peg as a timely critique of Trump-era, one-percenter avarice — plays to multiple audiences. Politics, however, don’t need to stand in the way of the film’s breathless race through the preposterous scenario so alluringly and successfully teased by the trailer. 

As a high-concept bonbon for genre lovers, the deadly game-play strategies of “Ready or Not” occupy the familiar territory of humans as hunted prey in literature and film. From “The Most Dangerous Game” to “The Purge,” the sickening thought of people stalking people as sport is more often than not attended by authorial observations on class, privilege, and power. The directors address each of those three in the twisty adventure of Samara Weaving’s deliberately-named Grace, a young woman of modest means about to marry into the obscenely wealthy Le Domas family, which built its fortune on card and board games.       

Suspension of disbelief is required, by us and by Grace on her wedding night. Tradition requires her participation in an unusual Le Domas initiation ritual. Comically trading on the ripe trope of coitus interruptus, which doubles, along with Grace’s white lace wedding dress, as a symbolic acknowledgement of our heroine’s “purity,” groom Alex (Mark O’Brien) grumpily and reluctantly goes along with the expectations. Grace, of course, draws the one card that triggers a life and death version of hide and seek: she will attempt to conceal herself from her new in-laws until dawn while they in turn attempt to locate and kill her, armed with an assortment of rifles, axes, shotguns, crossbows, and pistols.  

The universal experience of the durable children’s pastime translates effortlessly to audience identification with the protagonist, and the filmmakers make sensational use of the endless rooms, hidden passageways, staircases, dumbwaiters, corridors, and grounds of the opulent estate (played by a few Toronto-area locations) occupied by the members of the off-kilter clan. As a kind of grown-up “Clue” in reverse, complete with the tribute appearance of a pepper-box revolver, “Ready or Not” also lays out a motley assortment of Colonel Mustard and Mrs. Peacock-worthy opponents hell-bent on dispatching Grace prior to sun-up. 

As Grace copes with her horrifying crucible, the stages of her new personhood are symbolized by the increasingly sorry state of her gown. The dirtier and bloodier and more torn it becomes, the more you like her. She’s a smaller-scale cinematic little sister to Beatrix Kiddo. This year has already seen a bounty of entertaining and thought-provoking horror. “Midsommar” and “Us,” superior films that feature intriguing similarities to “Ready or Not” are just two of them. While all three have moments of humor, “Ready or Not” sprints along with a deliberate tonal playfulness that mitigates the kind of alarmism that led to Universal’s suspension of Craig Zobel’s “The Hunt” in response to another one or two of America’s never-ending supply of mass shootings.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Based on a memoir by journalist and superfan Sarfraz Manzoor, the inoffensive music-themed bildungsroman “Blinded by the Light” licenses the songs of Bruce Springsteen to communicate the growing pains shaping the life of 16-year-old Javed Khan (Viveik Kalra) in late-1980s Great Britain. Javed, whose mother and father came to England from Pakistan in search of opportunity, contend with the genre’s familiar parental roles: exaggerated disdain for the “rebel” attitudes of their offspring and an unrealistic expectation for obedience at odds with the realities of being a teenager struggling to find a place in the world and a sense of identity. 

Directed and co-written by veteran filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, best known in the United States for “Bend It Like Beckham” and “Bride and Prejudice,” the new movie extends Chadha’s thematic interest in the lives of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent who must navigate the challenges of the liminal space between their old world and their new one. The Thatcher-era setting of “Blinded by the Light” allows Chadha to draw parallels to the right-leaning, contemporary political landscape. The Khan family, based in Luton and barely making ends meet with unstable work at the local auto plant and home sewing jobs, suffers all kinds of racist humiliation.

Frustrated by the seemingly unfair demands of his father and the threats of local National Front and Nazi punks, Javed’s eyes and ears are enlightened by the sounds of “the Boss of Us All” when Sikh schoolmate Roops (a charismatic Aaron Phagura) shares his cherished cassette tapes. Javed is transfixed by the honesty of what he hears, instantly relating to the themes of struggle both economic and romantic. The otherwise unlikely positioning of New Jersey’s beloved son as a hero to Javed, a Pakistani teen from England, provides the film with its hook; the subtitle on some editions of Manzoor’s 2007 book “Greetings from Bury Park” is “Race. Religion. Rock ‘n’ Roll.”      

Chadha cultivates a wholesome, old-fashioned tone that more often than not pushes the movie into territory that might (un)charitably be tagged as a big screen version of the Hallmark Hall of Fame ethos. Javed’s kind, caring, and supportive teacher Ms. Clay (Hayley Atwell) encourages her student to believe in himself as a writer. A taciturn, neighborhood World War II veteran delivers an unexpected message. Javed’s bubbly, supportive crush Eliza (Nell Williams) is as available and desirable as any Manic Pixie Dream Girl, though she at least pursues her own justice-focused political activism. There’s even a heartfelt school assembly speech with lump-in-the-throat, off-script declarations of truth.

Springsteen fans will appreciate the ways in which Chadha uses tracks like “Born to Run,” “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night” to argue for the transcendental, emotional punch of great songs as universe-altering touchstones. Manzoor has said, like all of us have felt about one artist or another, “This is my life. He’s actually singing about my life.” In some scenes, lyrics are represented as bold, oversized motion graphics — the text swimming around the physical spaces occupied by the protagonist. Choices like this one will not endear the movie to the cynical, but the cynical are not Chadha’s intended target.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A dispiriting negative critical consensus and the worst opening numbers to date for Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish nailed shut the coffin lid of Andrea Berloff’s directorial debut “The Kitchen,” which the veteran, Oscar-nominated screenwriter adapted from the Vertigo series of the same name. The disappointing reaction to the story of a trio of mob wives who successfully run an organized crime operation in New York in the late 1970s is not particularly surprising. The month of August has long been pegged as a theatrical dumping ground of sorts, as all kinds of content limps into cinemas with low expectations.

“The Kitchen,” reminiscent of writer-director Steve McQueen’s 2018 “Widows” (itself based on a 1983 British TV series), may not deserve such a hasty dismissal. Berloff’s observations of human behavior through individual motivations credibly delineate the protagonists. McCarthy’s Kathy Brennan, mother to two young kids, discovers a perverse knack for patching leaks and putting people to work. Haddish’s Ruby O’Carroll seeks to upend the racist humiliation she suffers as a non-Irish outsider. Elisabeth Moss’ Claire Walsh emerges as the most interesting of the group. Physically and emotionally tormented and victimized for years by her brutal husband, his temporary removal awakens in Claire a twisted penchant for the kind of violence on display in “The Godfather,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Eastern Promises.”

The title’s geographic shorthand also deliberately evokes the regressive expectations for the three central women: by creating opportunity for themselves in the absence of their incarcerated spouses, the domestic homemaking role of the subservient helpmeet gives way to the surprising skill with which the wives quickly outperform their husbands in the heat of Hell’s Kitchen. Berloff’s presentation of the awakenings of the women is visualized through the common tropes of the wise guy milieu, and that choice enhances the subtext. The filmmaker uses the period setting to comment on a range of still-relevant contemporary inequities faced by the marginalized (and delivers at least one solid diss to Trump for good measure).       

One of the likely reasons for the film’s woes extends to the casting of McCarthy and Haddish in predominantly straight, non-comic roles. Given the marketing of the movie, audiences may have expected lighter content and tone than the grim and gritty results that unfold onscreen. To compound matters, Berloff embraces the same kind of black, gallows humor so readily incorporated in the mafia worlds of Martin Scorsese and David Chase. Flashes of startling bloodshed and the mechanics of post-mortem disposal, signatures of “Goodfellas” and Tim Van Patten’s legendary “Whoever Did This” in the fourth season of “The Sopranos,” are regular features in “The Kitchen.”  

Claire proves a quick study under Domhnall Gleeson’s Gabriel, a livewire assassin whose tenderness toward his pupil is just one example of the curious and welcome ways in which Berloff colorfully imagines the male inhabitants of this world. See also Bill Camp’s winking turn as a Brooklyn-based boss curious to observe how the fortunes of the women play out. “The Kitchen” fares so much better when read as a kind of self-aware metanarrative of the gangster film, and an examination of Berloff’s construction of the men — ranging from the selfish blindness of the status quo-embracing husbands to the tradition-respecting working stiffs of the local union — is one argument for why this rare, female-helmed genre piece deserves a second look.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Lulu Wang finds inventive ways to freshen up the terminal cancer tale in “The Farewell,” a worthwhile diversion to so much summer blockbuster fare. The popular subgenre, which comfortably intersects with drama, comedy, and romance, has attracted filmmakers and audiences for decades. Akira Kurosawa (“Ikiru”), Ingmar Bergman (“Cries & Whispers”), and Mike Nichols (“Wit”) all brought their considerable talents to the associated tropes of the category, and scores of others have explored the built-in emotional fireworks of life interrupted and mortality faced.

Awkwafina plays Billi, a struggling New York writer who was brought by her parents to America from China at the age of six a quarter of a century ago. Hiding her struggles to make rent from father Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and mother Jian (Diana Lin), Billi expresses alarm when told that her beloved Nai Nai (the Chinese term of endearment for a paternal grandmother) is in the late stages of advanced lung cancer and likely has just months to live. Using the comically elaborate pretext of Billi’s cousin’s wedding to gather the family in Changchun, the members of the clan have agreed to withhold the truth about Nai Nai’s condition from the matriarch.   

Billi, initially incredulous that her relatives would all perpetuate a so-called “good lie,” wonders aloud whether a person should have the right to know about one’s own health matters. Billi’s “moral” position, broadly representative of the Western individualism that clashes with the collectivist system practiced by her extended relations, marks the first significant theme Wang will explore as the wedding preparations unfold in Changchun. The filmmaker, who developed “The Farewell” from a segment called “What You Don’t Know” that she produced for the 2016 “This American Life” episode “In Defense of Ignorance,” uses the subterfuge as a way to think about, among other things, dual-culture identity. 

Wang’s welcome twist distinguishes “The Farewell” and sets up another of the movie’s successful visual and thematic contrasts: the morose cloud of gloom that hovers above the head of Billi versus the vivacious optimism and joie de vivre emanating from the cheerful Nai Nai. Zhao Shuzen is a marvelous onscreen presence as Billi’s grandma, and Wang stages several astute, observant, and insightful exchanges between the old woman and the young woman. Accordingly, the film deftly balances the comic and the tragic from start to finish (see, or rather don’t see, Zara Hayes’ insulting “Poms” for comparison).  

“The Farewell” opens with the script “Based on a true lie” and ends with an image of epiphanic surprise. Wang’s autobiographical connection to the material, embodied via audience identification with Billi, adds some intrigue, especially when it comes to the elements of suspense and anxiety revolving around the ever-present threat that Billi will defy the wishes of the others and share the truth with Nai Nai. Several critics have noted a kinship between Ang Lee’s early-career indie “The Wedding Banquet” and “The Farewell,” both in terms of East-West differences and in the application of deceit as a storytelling device. The comparison is reasonable, and hopefully Wang will build an equally distinguished filmography.         

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For superstar auteur Quentin Tarantino, there’s no business like show business — never has been for the whole arc of his career — and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” doubles down on everything that fanboy and fangirl (mostly fanboy) disciples have studied with religious devotion since the days of “Reservoir Dogs.” A nonstop pastiche of pop culture references both iconic and obscure, the new feature embraces revisionism and fantasy in its interpretation of events surrounding the gruesome murders of Sharon Tate and friends by members of the Charles Manson Family in August of 1969.   

Tate is played by Margot Robbie, and our knowledge of her senseless and tragic demise hangs like a dark cloud over the otherwise freewheeling portrayal of the “more than a friend, less than a wife” bromance between Leonardo DiCaprio’s washed-up, alcoholic TV actor Rick Dalton and his Hal Needham-inspired driver/stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Los Angeles plays itself as an equally important character, and appreciators of meticulous period detail and history by suggestion will devour the Boss Radio/KHJ promo spots interspersed with expectedly perfect soundtrack selections like Los Bravos’ “Bring a Little Lovin’” and Neil Diamond’s “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.”   

Cinematically, Tarantino does so many things so well it can be easy to forget that his magic armor has been deflecting all manner of criticism for years. His Wikipedia biography contains an entire section labeled “controversies,” selecting a quintet of issues that includes his problematic relationship to the N-word and his irresponsible mistreatment of Uma Thurman during the filming of a dangerous driving scene while making “Kill Bill.” Additionally, his proximity to Harvey Weinstein and his 2003 defense of Roman Polanski have been haunting a number of the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” conversations.  

Arguably, QT tightened his own noose by grossly underwriting Tate and depriving her of nearly any scene in which the audience is allowed inside her head. At Cannes, Farah Nayeri was the first person to call out the lopsidedness of Robbie’s onscreen agency in comparison to what DiCaprio and Pitt were given to play. Tarantino was predictably unapologetic. Rich Juzwiak’s thoughtful and thorough case against the filmmaker’s “shittiness toward women” is a must-read that lays out a strong argument, adding another chapter to the continuing discussion of gender in the director’s films. 

It will surprise nobody that Tarantino’s contract granted him final cut or that the length of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is 161 minutes. The pacing, rhythm, and crosscutting all aid in evoking the episodic television milieu inhabited by Dalton and Booth. And the leisurely running time carves out plenty of room for the actors to stretch their legs (Booth’s meal preparation ritual for scene-stealing pet pooch Brandy is as much fun as Dalton’s heart-to-heart with precocious co-star Julia Butters, who manages to make off with a scene or two herself). It’s easy to read Tarantino’s own artistic anxieties concerning relevance and vitality into the movie’s thematic exploration of faded and fading glory, but the film can certainly be properly pondered without any biographical inferences.     

Except for the foot fetishism.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Riley Stearns confronts the foul odor of hypermasculinity and misogyny in “The Art of Self-Defense,” a pitch-black comedy featuring Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, and Imogen Poots. Eisenberg’s Casey Davies is another of the actor’s signature submissives, a “35-year-old dog owner” (according to a local news report) victimized by a group of motorcycle thugs while on his way to purchase chow for his dachshund. The brutal physical assault merely adds to Casey’s daily humiliations. His every waking hour is fraught with a suffocating series of micro and macro indignities, which Stearns presents with droll self-reflexiveness.    

Casey joins a karate class led by the enigmatic Sensei (Nivola), a supremely confident martial artist whose unorthodox methods on the mat are paired with increasingly alarming invective. Especially troubling is the openly hostile criticism Sensei directs toward skillful brown-belt Anna (Poots), the only female student in the dojo. Sensei’s ugly leadership in “The Art of Self-Defense” invites comparisons to the reactionary and defensive buffoonery of Donald Trump and his MAGA legion. As satirical critique, Stearns’ vision metaphorically intersects with ongoing discussions centered on the politics of white male fragility.   

The film’s pronounced references to its own artificiality irritate or delight, depending on one’s tastes. Stearns expresses a level of individuality that merits attention, but his grasp of tone — which includes an often successful blend of surrealism and banality — lacks the consistency of Quentin Dupieux, whose “Wrong” parallels “The Art of Self-Defense” in several respects. Blunt-force radical honesty and statements of the obvious to generate uneasy laughter call to mind Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth.” Stearns’ association with David and Nathan Zellner, who serve as two of the movie’s executive producers, builds additional goodwill and credibility. David Zellner is a welcome onscreen presence as blue-belt karate student Henry.  

Like “God’s lonely man” Travis Bickle, Casey’s inclination to lash out with the aid of a firearm leads to a comic exchange with a purveyor of guns and serves as a terrifying reminder of just how easily the frustration of an Angry Man in America can escalate to mayhem and murder. The arch dialogue in the interaction between Casey and Davey Johnson’s blunt shopkeeper echoes the famous scene between De Niro’s cabbie and Steven Prince’s smooth-talking salesman in “Taxi Driver.” Paul Schrader’s dialogue, however, is subtle by comparison, as Stearns imagines a no-pressure dealer eager to describe every possible statistical horror awaiting a new pistol owner.   

Karate provides Casey with a sense of purpose, a feeling of self-control, and an avenue for reinvention. But cracks in Sensei’s facade present our protagonist with increasingly thorny dilemmas. While Stearns exploits a number of ridiculous possibilities invited by the color-coded hierarchical structure of the ancient combat system — Casey’s desire to wear a yellow belt at all times inspires one of the movie’s funniest scenes  — “The Art of Self-Defense” just as comfortably embraces horror tropes. The close proximity of sudden, shocking violence to the humor challenges viewer expectations, but with a few notable exceptions in the movie’s later sections, the filmmaker successfully pulls off his tricks.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Legendary British skipper Tracy Edwards, who in 1989 led the first all-female crew of sailors to compete in the tough-as-nails, 33,000-mile Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, makes for a convincing heroine in filmmaker Alex Holmes’ thrilling sports documentary “Maiden.” Named for the refurbished, King Hussein of Jordan-sponsored vessel Edwards piloted in the competition, the film unfolds with a strong sense of adventure and excitement — due in part to the likely ignorance of a majority of viewers who don’t know the outcome of the contest, and also to the urgency and immediacy suggested by Katie Bryer’s skillful editing. 

Yacht racing, when referenced at all in mainstream popular culture, suggests wealth, whiteness, masculinity, exclusivity, and privilege. Holmes doesn’t comprehensively dispel these characteristics, but does emphasize the rebellious, scrappy, outsider aspects of Edwards during her restless youth. The exposition, handled with economy, sets the film’s core thematic agenda: a tradition-smashing bid for respect in a space historically closed off to women. A period clip from a local news station package draws laughs and gasps. The merciless and cruel male chauvinism of observers is still present in several of the newly-shot interviews. And yet, then and now, Edwards is determined and undaunted. 

Holmes cuts among straightforward talking head interviews with crew, rival sailors, journalists, and others to fill in the narrative of the odyssey, but the lower-quality, archival, shot-on-video footage, often taken by Maiden cook (and Edwards’ childhood friend) Joanna Gooding, gives the director gripping raw material illustrating the power and extremes of weather conditions throughout the race. Those seafaring images are Edwards’ equal in star power, and should drive viewers to the movie. “Maiden” additionally weaves together recollections from Edwards’ supporting cast of voyagers, providing details about all kinds of doubts, fears, and challenges. One noteworthy example is the personality conflict that led to the dismissal of first mate Marie-Claude Kieffer Heys.      

During the course of the film, which charts the progress of the nine-month endeavor through its six legs, the commitment of the women to the cause and to the boat and to each other transcends the obvious messages of gender-indicated empowerment to say something even more profound. Edwards is rock-solid in this respect, delivering one naked truth bomb after another on the topics of both sailing and misogyny, with articulate, crystalline, no-bullshit perspicacity. The women on board the Maiden, nearly all of whom are on hand to look back, speak with such candor, tears will stain the cheeks of all but the hardest spectators.

Holmes, who first encountered Edwards when she spoke at his daughter’s school, suggests that the feminism of yesterday versus today can illustrate the insidious grip of entrenched, male-run institutions. Reflecting and refracting the ongoing conversations around everything from the salary inequity between male and female soccer players to the alleged child sex trafficking hellscape perpetuated by Jeffrey Epstein (the latter of which is brilliantly addressed by Rebecca Solnit in her recent Literary Hub essay “In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream”), “Maiden” can be read as both time capsule and time bomb.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Hereditary” director Ari Aster’s sophomore feature “Midsommar” firmly cements the filmmaker’s auteur bona fides. A visually stunning slice of art-house “folk horror” that draws from several touchstone movies — most notably Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece “The Wicker Man” — Aster once again explores the insidious devastation of grief, this time within the framework of a romantic relationship break-up. Bereft of jump scares and absent the visceral action of many of its scenes necessaires, “Midsommar” is executed with Bressonian control. Gorehounds should not despair, however, as Aster unleashes several nauseating depictions of mayhem, barbarity, and damage visited upon the human body.

Even prior to release, it was inevitable that “Midsommar” would divide viewers; internet discussion boards have hosted lively, intense deliberations scrutinizing the film’s minutiae. Comparisons of the script to the finished film, which clocks in at a rather expansive 147 minutes, is but one of the topics. Others delve into Aster’s considerations of religious faith and fanaticism vis-a-vis Christianity and paganism, explorations of gender politics, numerological symbolism, altered states through hallucinogens, and assorted conspiracies and speculations that prod at the movie’s “real” meanings.  

Aster creatively takes advantage of setting to drench “Midsommar” in the light of the midnight sun. Hungary stands in for the north Sweden commune inhabited by the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Harga villagers, and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski and production designer Henrik Svensson combine forces to render a geometrically seductive arrangement of striking, elegantly simple buildings integrated with natural features including woods, meadows, and an ominous rock formation that features in what might be the film’s most shocking and stunning sequence. One could spend hours contemplating Aster’s use of indoor and outdoor spaces.

Aster’s previous work with Toni Collette indicated the director’s appreciation of deeply accomplished, next-level performance, and the casting of Florence Pugh as the grieving, fraying-at-the-seams Dani Ardor matches the rawness and intensity displayed in “Hereditary.” As a young woman clinging to a boyfriend who remains with her out of pity, Dani is Pugh’s richest character opportunity since her utterly jaw-dropping and Oscar-worthy breakout in “Lady Macbeth.” She navigates the complex emotional terrain of Dani’s incredible journey with convincing and surefooted skill. 

Aster carefully structures his films, and so much detail is provided in the expository arc. The composition of multiple frames in which Dani is the lone female amidst the quartet of faux-sympathetic partner Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends adds to the chill. “Midsommar” captures the way in which males in a group can so completely ostracize an unwanted female “intruder.” In one of Aster’s many inventive touches, the prologue immediately establishes Dani as the final girl even prior to her acceptance of Christian’s insincere invitation to join the trip to the rural collective where pal Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) grew up. 

In Jordan Peele’s excellent interview with Aster in the fourth issue of the relaunched “Fangoria,” the “Us” director lavishes praise on his peer, suggesting that Aster has accomplished in “Midsommar” an “ascension of horror” that subverts the common victimization of the viewer in favor of a remarkable identification with Dani. Peele says, “I felt like I was being put up on this pedestal and honored through the eyes of the protagonist.” Peele’s astute observation acknowledges yet another way in which Aster transcends genre expectation as a teller of distinctive and original stories.