a review of 仲夏夜惊魂

gaslighting, the musical. this is why no more than five white people should ever be allowed to live in the same place. why are cis men the only ones ever doing thought experiments about the age of consent being lower? (i dunno, i just think about myself at 15, and maybe it's good we don't let grown men fuck 15-year-olds?) is this the movie where a24 invented the upside down, slightly-off-level drone camera angle? all jokes aside, when they aren't doing gimmicky drone shots or some hyper-high-def-disney-looking shit, this film looks pretty good (if that's mostly all it has going for it). some interesting emphasis is created through what's in focus and out of focus in each shot. sets are fire. does ari aster have any storytelling skills aside from trauma porn and disorienting mania? i worry for him. the one interesting part of the writing is the acknowledgement that the vast majority of humans have no idea how consent works. utterly terrifying. you could do a drinking game where you drink every time a character says something true, and you'd be stone sober. this is by far his best and most scary movie... how does this guy get so close to making really interesting movies (ok, so not that close) but then just make them boring instead? i think a key thing he really seems to not grasp is that if every single one of his characters is boring or unlikable, i'm not gonna care when bad stuff happens to them, and therefore there's nothing going on in his movies. could benefit from a lil (much) tighter of an edit. ari aster sure seems like a chill, reasonable, and likable guy. p.s. any community that demands strict adherence to gender roles is a cult.