Midsommar (2019)

Directed by: Ari Aster | 147 minutes | drama, horror | Actors: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Vilhelm Blomgren, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Henrik Norlén, Gunnel Fred, Isabelle Grill, Agnes Westerlund Rase, Julia Ragnarsson, Mats Blomgren, Lars Väringer

Ari Aster was quick: barely a year after the release of his sublime debut ‘Hereditary’, the young director is already coming up with his second feature film. In ‘Midsommar’, Christian (Jack Reynor) is tired of his relationship with Dani (Florence Pugh). His friends encourage him to break up, but then a tragic incident throws a spanner in the works. When Christian and his friends then travel to a remote community in Sweden to spend the summer, they feel compelled to invite Dani along. Once there, the community turns out to be quite headstrong: cheerful, white-robed hippies who strive for a peaceful existence. In other words: watching monkeys undisturbed for the American students. However?

When Aster first got his hands on the script, ‘Midsommar’ was intended to be a slasher film à là ‘Hostel’, in which American tourists get hopelessly lost in the torture chambers of European culture. Not a good idea, Aster thought: he drastically rewrote the script and based part of the plot on his own breakup. The bizarre cult remained, but Aster provided the story with much-needed psychological depth. The characters in his films are therefore often searching; sensing the dark sides of their souls only after a tragic incident. In ‘Midsommar’, a fabulous prologue – almost a sublime short film in itself – builds up to that incident. Aster grabs you right by the throat in that first quarter of an hour, without using a single jump scare.

Where ‘Hereditary’ slowly portrayed the demise of a family rotten to the core, ‘Midsommar’ does the same with the relationship between Dani and Christian. Both films are almost small-scale, intimate dramas about the impact of grief on mutual relationships, supplemented with some supernatural, extraordinary influences. In Aster’s world, the horror does not necessarily lurk in the darkness or the explicit, but much more in the interpersonal relationships: the horror beneath the safe surface. While the incomparable Toni Collette in ‘Hereditary’ was the rusty beacon that had to channel the horror, here it is rising star Florence Pugh who slowly releases her inner demons through her mourning and disturbed relationship with Christian.

And yet it is the setting of ‘Midsommar’ that is most disruptive. Where most horror films are set in the dark, ‘Midsommar’ was filmed almost exclusively in daylight. It provides an extremely interesting experience: it is precisely the exaggerated summer light that creates a sense of displacement, both for the characters and the viewer. The cinematography and production design are stunning and, in a way, part of the plot. The safe, idyllic atmosphere of the community does the same thing the dollhouse did in ‘Hereditary’: locking the characters in a defined world, where the walls of their safe existence are slowly crumbling. ‘Midsommar’ is therefore also a film about displacement, loneliness and finding a safe haven. It’s too easy to see the cult members just as monsters: Dani opens up an opportunity for embrace by a new family, the orphan who finds a new shelter.

At its core, ‘Midsommar’ also shows similarities with ‘The Wicker Man’, the British cult classic in which a cop slowly falls into the hands of a cult on a remote island due to a missing person case. That comparison especially pops up when Aster takes the time to cover the cult’s (bizarre) rituals in detail, culminating in the most curious sex scene 2019 yet spawned. It also makes the movie quite witty in its own way.

All this means that ‘Midsommar’ has a face of its own, in that the cinema-goer who wants to get scared old-fashioned (think of films such as ‘It’ or ‘Annabelle’) will probably find it less satisfying. ‘Midsommar’ takes a long breath and offers no answers on a silver platter: the real horror takes place beneath the surface. It nevertheless culminates in a frenzied and bizarre finale with an endlessly intriguing final shot. How that ending should be interpreted exactly is up to the viewer, but one thing is certain: what ‘Hereditary’ was for taking fresh air from a car window, ‘Midsommar’ is for reflection trips to Sweden, in other words: never do it again.