Midsommar - 2019
The story of Midsommar, for me, actually begins a year previously. It was 2018, and I was staring blankly as the credits of Ari Aster's Hereditary scrolled past my unseeing eyes. I was not completely sure what I had just witnessed, but I knew it was of a different caliber than so much of the trashy horror coming out today. Aster's eye for detail with the camera, the remarkable way he shot his picture stuck with me. So too did the score, which, as you know, is such a vital underbelly in all horror pictures. I simply remember feeling like - Wow, if there was ever an arthead who made horror films (a genre long thought of as pulpy, sleazy gore fests for the adolescent male brain), it would be this dude.
Well, Aster is back again, and this time he's made an EVEN BETTER art horror masterpiece. One need only watch the first 10 minutes or so of Midsommar to realize the master is back at the helm. An opening murder-suicide plays out with these sweeping phantasmagoric shots over a bed of haunting strings. This is the introduction to the picture. I suggest you buckle up.
From there, our plot comes into focus. A group of American anthropology students (and one's girlfriend) decide to take a holiday traveling to a remote area of Sweden to join a rare midsummer festival. What at first seems like a land of endless pleasures - sunny 'scapes, warm strangers, and freely available hallucinogenics - soon becomes increasingly unnerving. Until the group realizes that they've actually stumbled into the middle of a pagan, suicide cult, and the once warm looks have now taken on a more sinister hue. What do you do when the ritual may be about...you?!
Ari Aster is just the best guy working on these kinds of films. His depiction of an acid trip is visually transcendent, and commingled with the score and atmosphere, truly freaky. His characters are rich and believable, his endings ALWAYS shocking and visceral. Add to these things the fact that this entire film is made in BROAD DAYLIGHT. Think about that! How subversive! How often is dark used as the creator of fear and suspense in horror films? Aster is not afforded that crutch, and he still delivers the chills!
Still, what I found to be truly mesmeric about Midsommar came from an interview I heard with Aster after the fact. In it, he claimed that he really wanted his film to be seen as a break up movie dressed up in folk horror raiment. A bit like The Wicker Man meets 10 Things I Hate About You (One of these things is not like the other). And Aster lays this all out, from the girl staying with the "wrong guy" while the dream man sits right underneath her nose, to her experiencing a series of ordeals which eventually end with breaking free and burning the old memories of boyfriends' past. It's all there in Midsommar, in the most diabolical, wonky terror event you may ever be privileged to attend.
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