End your week with this video of a child fleeing the theater during a Midsommar screening
[Spoilers for Midsommar below.]
You think parents have time to watch trailers? Or read reviews? Or, hell, even plot descriptions? When it comes to movies, they look for the pretty colors and buy a ticket. One has to assume that’s the case for this parent who took their child to a screening of Ari Aster’s nightmarish Midsommar, which unspools its cult-focused folk horror against warm sunlight and a kaleidoscopic array of flowers. A24, the studio behind the movie, retweeted a short, frantic video of said parent and child hustling out of the theater in what looks to be genuine terror.
Our question: What took so long? The person who tweeted out the video clarifies in a follow-up that the swift, harried departure came right after the film’s orgy sequence, which arrives near the end of the movie. That means the kid sat through suicides, scenes of drug use, and one sequence where a dude’s head is graphically smashed in with a mallet. In a way, though, it makes sense, what with Americans having been trained to be more fearful of the human body than brutal violence.
Parents, don’t force your children to watch horror. Do what our parents did: Let them to discover it on their own. At home. Where they can watch it through splayed, shivering fingers without worrying about someone filming them.