It’s the kind of movie that burrows deep into your psyche, haunting you for days afterward.
indoctrinates us, the audience, along with its characters. The entire film feels like a slow descent into frenzied, ritualized madness — you don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late to stop it.
And yet, there were clues all along. Aster plants eerie symbols and glyphs — which, despite their beauty and color, telegraph a deep sense of unease — skillfully captured by cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski. Pagan rituals celebrating fertility and the life cycle are depicted throughout, and like so many things that can trace their origins back to the early days of civilization, there’s a brutal, violent stain beneath the veneer of rebirth.
At 140 minutes, the actions does drag a little more than it should, especially in settling up and immersing the characters into the idyllic cult setting — a slow burn that’s in sharp contrast to how quickly Dani’s trauma unfolds in the opening minutes. What’s more, for a film that leans so heavily into literal symbolism,doesn’t really unpack some of the more complex ideas it’s presenting — like the fact that the first to go missing are the sole people of color to visit the community.
It’s refreshing to see a movie about a fertility ritual focus overwhelmingly on male nudity. There’s something undeniably matriarchal about this commune. Women choose their mates, not the other way around, and the climax of the festival is the choosing of the May Queen, who then holds sway over the final, devastating ceremony., as seen through the prism of horror. It’s sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, which makes the darker moments even more troubling.
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