Midsommar - come into play when
Elen succumbs to a mysterious fe-
ver. Aware of the impending threat
to her family and the farm, she be-
gins engaging in strange rituals,
slashing her arm and collecting her
blood in a pot, and spreading frag-
ments of a crushed sheep’s skull
outside the farm’s gate.
What’s most terrifying about
Gwen is how the threat appears
not to be of any supernatu-
ral origin, but simply of human
greed. As the baron’s chief en-
forcer, Mark Lewis Jones cuts a
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 62
strikingly eerie figure, dressed top
to toe in black like an industrial
era Witchfinder, and parallels are
drawn to the treatment of women
suspected of witchcraft in the
film’s exceptionally grim finale.
Cinematographer Adam Ethering-
ton captures this part of the world
in all its forbidding glory, and Mc-
Gregor wisely chooses to eschew
a musical score, relying instead on
a symphony of battering winds,
distant animal howls and the odd
explosion from the encroaching
quarries.
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