Midsommar

Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm Blomgren

Director: Ari Aster

Midsommar is a wicked, disturbing, oddly funny trip that’s likely to follow you home and sit with you for days. It starts with Dani (Florence Pugh) dealing with a crippling loss. She decides to go to Sweden for a commune’s Midsommar festival with her long time, but awful boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends, scholar Josh (William Jackson Harper), douchebag Mark (Will Poulter) and the planner of the trip/member of the commune Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). Everything looks fine in the sundrenched land of the midnight sun, but something feels off. Oh boy is it ever off.

Director Ari Aster is awesome. Full stop. Hereditary is a divisive horror masterpiece. To follow that up with what sure to be an equally divisive two hour and twenty minute sprawling cult horror film is a move you can’t help but respect. Respect it I did. Not just for the creepiness, but for this film’s style and craft.

Much like in Hereditary, Midsommar does not look like a standard horror show, more like an art film. The setting flips a tried and true horror standard on its head by having an intense movie that takes place almost entirely in the constant daylight. Blinding daylight. It helps to build a sense of unease because it both eliminates your sense of time and increases unpredictability. Daytime is safe, everything bad happens at night. Think again. Shots are chosen and held with a specificity that shows a real command of cinema. A sequence that handles Dani’s tragedy is nothing short of stunning and a bravura arced shot that goes from behind a car to an upside down shot in front of it (like the mind-blowing shot from Tarsem’s The Cell, but with a moving vehicle) immediately come to mind. If it all sounds a bit like Hereditary you are right. With Pawel Pogorzelski serving as cinematographer on both films they feel like spiritual siblings.

The similarities don’t end with looks alone as both feature loss heavily as a theme (and feature female main characters backed with Academy Award level performances). Aster could have stopped there, rested on his greatly earned laurels, and churned out another heavy musing on loss and grief or just done a Saw sequel or something, but instead he decided that for his sophomore effort he was going to go after damn near everything (sometimes with a welcome pitch black sense of humor too).

Here he is touching on cults, religions, support, friendship, academics, toxic masculinity, curiosity, normal dumb masculinity, tourists (specifically jerk off Americans), tradition, and the dismantling of a relationship. It is too much for one movie, even one that runs two and half hours. Some of these topics are merely touched which left me yearning for a bit more depth. The same can be said for the characters. I found them all to be relatively well sketched; especially Dani, but I really could have used some more time with them.

Yet for those small faults and overstuffed preponderance of ideas, Aster is able to keep the tension strong and tight even amongst open fields. It all stems from his ability to place us in Dani’s shoes and make us understand how isolated she feels. With all of the grief she is dealing with she seems even more detached from her “friends” than before. When things start getting odd and she starts being ignored there is this potent sense that no matter how many people are around she is going through this alone. No support or care, not even from the man she’s been with for four years (or three and a half if you ask him). It also shows what the pull of a cult is. All of these people who are willing to take on your pain and suffering to help you, being part of something that cares that you exist.

Most everything in Midsommar is fascinating. If you are a fan of cult movies like The Wicker Man, or Netflix’s Apostle, or even Ti West’s The Sacrament, then it is worth taking a trip into Aster’s pagan (self described) breakup movie. The cult is well put together yet remains mysterious. The events are disturbing, but not nearly the taboo breaking insanity that some reviewers have suggested. If you take the vacation it is best to just sit back and let this bizarrely funny, but mostly disturbing world flow over you.

Grade: B+