Did I pass a certain age or naivety to suspend disbelief for something like Midsommar...
Granted the atmosphere made are pretty well done, you can see thoughts put into normalizing the freaky rituals. The culty feeling is also quite solid, albeit the frequent use of ominous sounds.
The "thesis fight" was so idealistic as if you can call dibs on any topic... Within the science community, people often work on the same project, and publication happens in parallel. There's gonna be people writing on the subject. To think that you can get exclusives is not only self-righteous, but also shows a blindness to the fact that others don't have any obligation to follow your moral codes.
And to think "Elder disapproves" is gonna stop people from writing. Nothing is sacred in observation and reporting, people will find out and rituals are exposed. If you already let the outsiders in, they will bring the secrets out that's just how humans and story-telling works. With heightened technology, it will be more and more difficult for these cults to keep themselves as secretes, especially if they would let outsides in, and with people that intended to extract the secrets of these isolated societies. Although I guess never letting them out is a way to avoid that.
Like many other films, scripts that focus on one aspect of finishing tend to overlook some other aspects. But hey, that last Christian scene was hilariously creepy.
