What's so great about Midsommar?

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I saw the movie and felt it was really kind of terrible really, and I don't get why it was such a hit with critics.

I am also really surprised this movie got such high reviews from critics. I mean sure it's creepy but the story doesn't add up. But I guess creepy is enough for critics? Unless I missed something?

It is a film about cults and manipulation. Maybe that part is quite subtle from your perspective, so if there is nuance oyu cannot see it? (Not a criticism)

Well I understand people being indoctrinated into cults, but usually murdering people right in front of you and making you find pubic hairs in your drink, you think would not be an effective way of seducing one into it.

I liked it quite a bit.

Maybe their manipulation was just that good? I mean in a cult there's always a way to handwave a murder, isn't there?

I don't know I mean the things they did would send me running, and if I can't get seduced into the cult when putting myself into the character's shoes, then I can't believe that they can.

It's not a film about cults, it's a film about culture. The American students are all anthropologists - people who study foreign cultures.

The film poses the question of how far is a foreign culture allowed to deviate from ours, how different may their values be, and what if that culture poses a threat?
But it also portrays that culture as caring for each other, a tightly knit community - whereas the Americans don't care much for each other - so little, they think it's okay for some members of their group just to vanish. (That's why they're not fleeing).

So, as you can see: the people in this film aren't merely people, they are behaving as concepts. It's not meant to be a film about normal people in extraordinary situations, but about various people of one type -caring, community driven, but with bizarre and murderous beliefs - vs another type: unquestioningly accepting other values, but devoid of their own, where interpersonal bonds are loose.

Francis Pugh's character is split between them, she's mourning the death of her family and she's not finding the support and close connection from the people she's surrounded with. But she gets this kind of support from the other group - if, of course, she's willing to accept their bizarre and murderous culture.

The film poses the question whether you would rather have a community that is supportive and tightly knit but has no problem killing off people who don't beling to their group, - or a society lacking in value judgements about others, but unable to provide support in times of crisis.
And of course the question of whether it is possible to have a tightly knit community that doesn't have weird rituals, and a clearly defined in- and outgroup.

Critics liked this film because it is a difficult question, but it was cleverly presented. And it is quite provocative to multiciluralists AND nationalists alike - we start out by default on the side of the liberal Americans, and are eventually faced with the outcome of Francis Pugh's character picking the other side, which is clearly portrayed as bizarre throughout the film. Can we understand why?
And what if it wasn't about murderous Swedish people with a weird religion, but about the Taliban?

Oh okay, I guess I just didn't think the questions the film asked where that philosophically, important, and I felt if they can murder other people so easily, why would she trust that they would turn on her one day. Plus they never really explained why they picked her a Queen. She didn't fall down during a dance, but that is the most contrived reason to pick her to be a Queen I have probably ever heard of. Plus they didn't allow the others to dance before murdering them so they never explained why they were not worthy of a dance, unless I missed something?

But either way, I didn't think the questions the story asked where that important, and the main character just came off as a crazy person who was implausibly suckered, or so I thought.

To some extent you're right - but of course, you're looking at it through the lense of "what would be the normsl thing to do" - or asking yourself thevquestion of plotpoints being contrived, and I agree - it is somewhat weak in that respect. If the director had managed to make it work as well on the level of basic storytelling as he has managed to make it work conceptually, it might have been a masterpiece.

However, there is an argument to be made for the characters being flat and behaving counterintuitive: it does guide you to questioning the films intentions and ideas harder - because with a character that flat and unlikable, and some of the plotpoints established so poorly, the film must be either very bad, or about something else than characters and plot entirely.
Critics saw something other in it than characters and plot, and liked that.

Films like that are rare nowadays, but they were really more common in the 70s. Or maybe it's just that critics liked that kind of film back then, too, and when you search for good films from the 70s, Google comes up with what the critics liked back then, rather than with forgettable romantic comedies.
Filmhistorically speaking, films like this got out of fashion in the 80s. There were still difficult, philosophical films, but they'd be very realistic in their setting and cheap to produce.
Lars von Trier for example built his career on difficult films, but in the 90s and early 2000s, he shot them on video and cheap digital tape, with only natural lighting, no vfx whatsoever.

Seeing a difficult film in a fantastical setting like this getting made today is actually a bit special.

That's true, the movie is very unusual and there are not a lot of movies made like this in anymore, at least by the US. I watch a lot of European and Asian movies, so I am use to movies being strange or unusual, so this one may not have one me over as much as it may have a lot of others, because I am use to this type of movie, but I just didn't think it was done near as well, as some of the other ones I am use to.

But even though I didn't like the writing and found there to be some contrivances and holes here and there, everything about the production and cinematography for example, and the editing is top notch. I have seen a couple of Lars Von Trier movie, but I liked them better.

Ah, appears I wasn't fully aware of the plot either. I only heard about the cultish part. The angle it takes is... interesting, to say the least.

Well I was thinking more about this point of the movie, that she finally found acceptance, when others were not willing to accept her. However, the cult did drug her boyfriend and manipulate him into having sex with them of them in order to manipulate her into killing him. So it doesn't really seem like they accepted her though, because they were manipulating her like a pawn though. So it doesn't feel like acceptance of her though, unless I am wrong?

Acceptance maybe a bit wrong. Membership maybe. - as in any good secret society, a new member has to commit a crime to show his commitment - so the new member has to pass a threshold he or she can not cross back again.
Sects make you give up all your money and alienate you from your previous social circles.


Edit: I just read your post in the writing forum about your gangster story, in which the new member hast to commit a crime to show he's a worthy candidate to become a member of the gang. That's exactly the same mechanism.
/Edit


On a larger scale, you'd have to convert to a new or abandon your old religion - but there's a bit of a mismatch in the symbolism, because you can't really join a different culture easily, at least when religion and religious practice aren't the dominant and defining trait of that culture. It's hard to define "membership" with cultures, and even harder to show in a film, other than through a drastic act the redifenes allegiance unmistakably. Like, you know, killing a member of your previous group, or your boyfriend, thus making any return to your old life impossible.
Cultures are a mix of practices, and not as clearly defined as membership to a certain society.
In the film, the Cult stands for a broader culture - however on the level of the plot, it does behave like a cult.

Oh okay. I understand the whole you have to commit a crime to get in, but she seems all so happy to do it, even though she must have known she was manipulated as a pawn into it. So why didn't she have more of a I'm just a pawn being used reaction, compared to an all too happy to do it to be accepted reaction, which just seems much more unnatural to her character for me?

But also, since she was promoted to Queen, it seems like she didn't have to actually commit the crime, as Queen and chose to do on her own accord, unless I am wrong?

You're looking at ot through the lens of "what would the character have to do for me to believe it" again, rather than looking at it as "this is what's happening, what does it mean?"

What does it mean that she *happily* kills off her boyfriend to join a murderous, family-oriented community? Similarly: as Queen, she might not have needed to kill him - but she did so happily. Why?

I'd argue that she's happily burning the bridges to her old life and fully adopting her place in the weird and *murderous* cult that doesn't care for outsiders, and neither does she.

I guess her motivation and reasoning didn't mean much to me. So she turned into a murderer, and become kind of crazy, and I think whoopdy doo, that's it? But maybe I just didn't find it compelling enough?