Midsommar: Comfort Viewing for a Strange Time

Midsommar: Comfort Viewing for a Strange Time

Larry Fitzmaurice

You might not usually turn to a horror movie for emotional relief, but Midsommar makes a case for it

What makes for good comfort viewing? When people typically list the content they gravitate towards to take their minds off things, the answers can both be personal and instructive. Reality TV shows are a delightfully frivolous way to lose your mind while you watch others do the same on your screen; the last 15 years of network TV comedies—I'm talking about the revered ones like 30 Rock and The Office, not area-man fare like Modern Family or Mike and Molly—practically mastered the art of warm-blanket television, gently outrageous and fiendishly clever without stepping too far into cynical or mean-spirited territory. There's the movies we know and love and have seen a million times, from the affable stoner odysseys of The Big Lebowski and Dazed and Confused to the IP-reliant good-guys-win fare that's become big-budget mo