MIDNIGHT STUN
‘Hereditary’ director brings dark touch to ‘Midsommar’
Don’t fall for it.
“Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s followup to last year’s acclaimed horror film “Hereditary,” may be littered with laughs but it’s just as creepy as its predecessor.
At first glance, “Midsommar” — hitting theaters Wednesday — brightly lit by the Scandinavian midnight summer sun, appears to be lighter fare than “Hereditary,” Aster’s feature directorial debut. The new film has comedic moments peppered throughout, whereas “Hereditary” barely lets its main players, and by extension the audience, crack a smile, let alone a laugh.
“I’m glad people find [‘Midsommar’] funny,” Aster told the Daily News. “I do see it as something of a dark comedy.” Aster added that nearly all his short films “were dark comedies” and the majority “are comedies of a type.”
“Midsommar” follows a young fractured couple and their pals on a trip to Europe, where they end up attending a festival featuring violent pagan rituals.
Like “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” was both written and directed by the Big Apple-born Aster. Both flicks also explore the complications of grief, destructive relationships and macabre cults.
After an unthinkable tragedy, Dani crashes her emotionally detached boyfriend Christian’s trip with his friends Mark and Josh to study European Midsummer traditions. Starting in the Swedish countryside, the group is taken with thedeceptively ethereal traditions of the Hårga commune until a festival, held every 90 years, gives way to sinister practices.
Despite the film’s reference to the 1993 Waco siege in Texas, which resulted in the deaths of more than 70 cult members inside the compound, Aster says, “I was kind of avoiding for the most part those infamous malignant cults that have horrible reputations, and I was actually looking at spiritual movements that I found very beautiful.”
“There are plenty [of ] cults,” Aster tells the Daily News of the inspiration for Hårga.
Though Aster cites the anthroposophical movement and its founder Rudolf Steiner, “especially in the design,” as an influence for the film, he’s largely tight-lipped about others because, “Some of them are kind of still in practice, and I don’t want to put a stain on them.”
“I wanted the viewers’ relationship to Hårga to be as complicated as it could be, given the fact that they are already … murderous,” Aster added.
Will Poulter, who plays comedic relief Mark, told The News he was entranced by the film’s script and after speaking to Aster and acquainting himself with his work, Poulter says, “I was like, I need to be a part of this, because I feel like if anyone can do this, it is this guy, Ari Aster.”