The Lobby #2: Midsommar (Patreon)

You asked, and we listened... eventually! We had several — several! — listeners  assume we would be doing a regular Next Picture Show episode on Ari Aster's follow-up to Hereditary, perhaps pairing the new Midsommar with obvious antecedent The Wicker Man. If only we hadn't already already paired Robin Hardy's 1973 film with The Witch back in 2016. While Midsommar could potentially have worked paired with a couple other films (which Scott briefly gets into in this episode of The Lobby), it just never quite worked out, and we've somehow left this highly discussable film go unremarked-upon for several weeks now. Well, NO MORE, because Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps finally found some time to hop on the phone (well, Skype) to talk over their reactions to the film — Keith a couple weeks after his first viewing, and Scott mere hours after his. Together they get into the control over style and tone that has made Aster such an exciting filmmaker in such a short span of time, how the story finds balance in its evocation of trauma, and whether the film is actually as hilarious as Scott thinks it is.