Midsommar
By Kit Macdonald
Florence Pugh puts in a fantastic leading performance in this terrifying summer horror, which somehow manages to be very clearly influenced by other films (The Wicker Man, Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers) and completely unique at the same time. Pugh and Jack Reynor play an American couple in a failing relationship who find themselves travelling with a group of friends to a strange but apparently quaint and deeply traditional festival in rural northern Sweden. The event is only held once every 90 years and is strictly kept secret from the rest of the world: the group are only invited because one of them comes from the community.
Things gradually go from bucolic and endearing to weird and then terrifying in exquisitely pitched style, the beautiful green landscape and endless sunshine a brilliantly simple inversion of traditional horror-film tropes. It's all set to a deliciously creepy soundtrack by the British composer Bobby Krlic, aka the Haxan Cloak, and it adds up to one of the most memorable movies of recent years.