The title of this lesson is “old world, new women” and the two films we were required to watch for this topic were Robert Eggers’ The VVitch (2016) and Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019). To me, these films have the same main theme in common even though they are very different movies. This theme is that of young women that have suffered tremendous emotional pain and then being put in situations of extreme stress. In The VVitch the main character, Thomasin, has her baby brother kidnapped when she is playing peek-a-boo with him. The baby is taken so quick that she has no idea who or what has taken him but she knows it is not a wolf that took him like her Father says. Thomasin is then resented by her own Mother and that alone is emotionally painful. It seems like Thomasin was the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong. Her mother was quite irritating but she had lost a baby recently and seems to take out all of her grief and anger on Thomasin.
In Midsommar the main character, Dani, goes through much more than Thomasin did at the start of the movie. She loses her whole family in one night when her sister commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning and kills her mom and dad in the process. This is hard enough but she also had a boyfriend, Christian, who had one foot out the door in the relationship. I just wish he would have just broke up with her so she would not have gone to Sweden. I really liked Dani’s character in the film. She was just a sweet girl who deserved so much better than Christian. They go on the trip to Sweden and this is the moment when I should have stopped watching the movie. I am only joking, but when Dani is in Sweden she is stuck there and there is no way out. Just the thought of being in her situation gives me anxiety. There was one thing that didn’t make sense to me, I know there was no way out, but the characters didn’t and how did they not just try to leave on their own the moment after they saw the two 72 year olds jump off a cliff and the other cult members horrifyingly smashing the man’s head in. This scene legitimately made me feel sick. If I was in the Americans situation I wouldn’t hear them out about their tradition I would have been out of there immediately just like the British couple tried to do.
Now let’s get to my thoughts on the films. Although these aren’t traditional “horror” movies these two movies scared me more than any two films in this course. The VVitch involved of course witches, but it also involved the Devil. Personally I believe the Devil is very real and the twist at the end of the film of the devil being in the form of “Black Phillip” the goat was something I never saw coming. I just thought there was one witch in the woods who was terrorizing the family, but it was actually Satan behind all of it. When Thomasin started talking to Black Phillip at the end of the film I thought she had lost her mind, but it turned out he was the one behind all of it. Midsommar was by far one of the most disturbing films I have ever watched. This horror film was quite different than any other horror films I have seen before because of all of the bright colors. Usually a horror film is dark and ominous looking. It did do a great job of getting you into the world of the film though. It also did a great job of grossing me out and it just made me feel very uneasy. To me this film was more suspenseful than anything. I can honestly say I had no idea what was coming next. I thought all of the guests to the village would die at the end, but Dani survived. She survived but she was not the same woman as she was at the start of the film. The last shot of the film showed her smiling creepily as her boyfriend was burnt alive. I can honestly say that I will not be suggesting this film to anyone I know on the count of how disturbing it was.