Lady Macbeth (2016)

Before Midsommar, Florence Pugh tried something closer to A Midsommar Night's Dream. A period piece based on a Russian novel inspired by a Shakespearean character.

Everybody is supposed to sound like they're from north England, so basically Scottish, which they mostly do. Except for Pugh, who somehow sounds like an American with a fake Scottish accent despite actually being British.

Pugh's jerk-off husband prefers to jerk off, so she throws herself at the chimbley sweep while he's away and generally acts like a petulant millenial. When her psychologically abusive father-in-law returns home, she kills him with mushroom soup so she can continue her sordid affair.

She and her chimbley sweeper don't plan ahead at all, and are taken completely by surprise when her husband returns home. This is easily solved with a candlestick and some shovels.

Pugh naïvely assumes she can live alone with her chimbley sweep in her ex-family's estate, but some lady shows up with a kid and paperwork suggesting that he is the ex-husband's son and heir. Back to a-murderin' they must go, the poor chimbley sweep considerably less convinced by now. And, although the local authorities are getting mighty suspicious by the third time, Pugh just blames it on the help and everybody is perfectly satisfied with that.

With frequent shots framing Pugh alone in strange and lonely positions, and with an uncomfortably silent soundtrack, it easily reminds of Yorgos Lanthimos. But is both less weird and less good than a Yorgos.