Midsommar

After blasting out of the gate with a parricide shocker, Midsommar steers viewers into a more conventional folk horror direction, which at times becomes an uneven viewing experience.

Much like he did in Hereditary, director Ari Aster is mining grief here, courtesy of survivor Dani (Florence Pugh of Oppenheimer, who gives a strong, grounded performance). Despite being inconsolable, Dani is cajoled by her beau and two friends into taking a trip to rural Sweden for a midsummer festival, because who doesn’t like a rager, especially after losing three members of your immediate family?

A couple of the fellow travellers are, what else? anthropologists whose research interests largely align with Nordic lore. Convenient that.

The friends drive through the Scandinavian countryside, with Aster’s camera taking viewers upside down, a symbolically nauseating move to upend your senses, perhaps?

Upon their arrival, they’re joined by a couple of bland Brits who have no backstory and seem to be there to go missing and/or add to a body count.

When the arrivals are offered psychedelics by the bearded commune denizens who despite being bedecked in culty, flowing robes, don’t even disrobe or partake, it makes this viewer wonder, what kind of crappy cult is this?

Anyway, all signs point to this crew being some kind of ABBA Branch Davidians (hell, one character even JOKES about how they resemble Waco acolytes). But this doesn’t stop one of the two academic interlopers to dispassionately/rudely pepper the group with questions about their weird religious practises, or another member of their ranks from desecrating one of their totem.

In a way, Midsommar almost follows tropes laid out by Italian cannibal features: the academics don’t think anything is amiss about this group of glassy-eyed, doily-wearing maypole swingers, despite this being painfully obvious to the viewer, who is bombarded with strange imagery and “weird stuff is happening here” signposts.

The commune operates in an almost Logan’s Run style conceit whereby members reaching a certain age are put out to pasture, although in Midsommar this is wholly voluntary – and in one of the most intense scenes, we get to see a couple’s demise.

Some of this is very engaging and arresting, especially the first hour, and sunny visuals straight out of Tenebre are a welcome departure from the shadowy darks deployed in most horrors. In the backend, however, people go missing and nobody seems to notice.

And with nothing but sketchily drawn characters (Dani notwithstanding) a 2.5-hour runtime gets to be tough slogging indeed.

*** (out of 5)

Demonia

Picture it. Sicily, 1486. Come for the Fulci, stay for the Golden Girls references.

While hardly the Golden Era when it comes to Il Maestro’s work, Demonia is “nun-theless” a pretty spirited good time.

In the prologue, a bunch of fire and pitchfork 15th villagers crucify five nuns. And then suddenly we’re in Toronto of all places (the home base for Really Awful Movies), and in the midst of a séance. It’s a bit like how City of the Living Dead takes us to a séance in New York City.

One of the participants, an archelogy grad student, Liz is overcome by visions of…nuns being crucified. Soon, she’s off to Sicily for an archeological dig, but not before being chastised by her University of Toronto prof/supervisor for taking part in silly, superstitious nonsense like seances. As an aside, how cool are archeological digs? Like in The Exorcist and The Ruins, they sure lend an air of dusty, desiccated mystery to the proceedings.

A couple of drunken workers helping out on the job site, tumble to their deaths in spectacular fashion. Obviously, the dig is cursed. But don’t say you weren’t warned! The Sicilian villagers, being a superstitious lot, implore the professor and his team to take their shovels elsewhere.

Soon, Liz is wandering around dusty crypts in this misbegotten Sicilian town, and having truly terrible visions.

Demonia features some of the portal to hell elements that director Lucio Fulci brought out in his Gates of Hell trilogy, and this is a flick that spans multiple genres – nunsploitaiton, supernatural, police procedural – and is a helluva good time.

Genre heads take note: Brett Halsey is in Cat in the Brain, while the local butcher, Turi, is played by Lino Salemme, one of the Berlin theatergoing denizens in Demons.

And speaking of butchering, unlike some of Fulci’s famous gutmunchers, Demonia shows a bit of restraint when it comes to gore…save for one, awesome scene involving, what else? Eyeballs!

Direct yours to this.

***1/2 (out of 5)