10 Best Horror Movies Of 2019

Knocking it clean out of the park with last year's Hereditary, auteur Ari Aster seems like he's an unstoppable force of nature when it comes to delivering subversive, arthouse horror that chills as much as it intrigues. Midsommar is another feather to his elaborate horror cap, or rather, another flower in his May Queen crown, taking the brightest sunlight and the most beautiful nature setting and turning them into an unrelenting source of dread.

A hallucinatory trip into a rural community's Midsummer celebrations in Sweden, the film seens Dani, her insensitive boyfriend, and two of his friends visit the Hårga commune for research - only to find the heady mix of drugs and strangers revolves around pagan cult offerings rather than simple summer fun.

Midsommar is an exhausting watch, and plays with the fine line of comedy and horror more often than it leans one specific way, but does so with such knowing precision and outright brave weirdness that it's hard not to be intoxicated by it. Beautiful in aesthetic as well as in its mysterious, unexplained threats, incredibly acted, and offering an ending that isn't soon forgotten, Midsommar is a work of art as much as it is a cinematic experience.

Horror taught us to be scared of the dark, but if Midsommar's anything to go by, true terror doesn't care what time it is.