Freaky ‘Midsommar’ is crazier than ‘Hereditary’
How could writer/director Ari Aster possibly follow up last year’s “Hereditary,” a truly wild film-going experience and borderline traumatic journey into darkness sold by an all-or-nothing lead performance? By doing it all again, but more so.
The doubling down both works and doesn’t in “Midsommar,” a striking and flawed follow-up that does for breakups what “Hereditary” did for dysfunctional families by way of Scandinavian folkhorror. It’s like if “Hereditary” and 1973’s “The Wicker Man” had a genetically malformed love child that grew up to kill a bunch of people in aesthetically pleasing
‘Midsommar’
R for disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language.
Great Fair Ari Aster. Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor.
Bad
Good Bomb
ways.
It starts, of course, with trauma. Emotionally fragile Dani (Florence Pugh) and emotionally distant Christian (Jack Reynor) are on the verge of a
breakup when a tragic event pushes Dani over the edge into catastrophic grief. Too guilt-stricken to pull the plug, Christian soldiers on with the relationship and invites Dani to tag along with him and a group of his male buddies on what was supposed to be a boys’ trip to Sweden, where she’s quickly made to feel like the third wheel in her own relationship.
Their Swedish friend Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) serves as their guide, taking them to his commune in the wilderness, where for the duration of a nineday solstice celebration his people will frolic in verdant fields, garbed in white and capped in flower crowns amidst a sun-bleached splendor so bright it hurts to look at. Dani gamely tries to white-knuckle her way through crippling anxiety and panic attacks to partake in the festivities, struggling to hold on as things get very, very weird.
Aster is gifted at evoking sensations in his audiences — primarily dread and anxiety, though there’s an abundance of gallows humor here too, a tension between the ominous and silly. “So, we’re just going to ignore the bear?” one of the Americans glibly asks as they walk past one of the caged carnivores, presented without explanation.
The atmosphere does much of the heavy lifting when the writing flags. Christian and his friends are deliberately dopey, with the air of casual colonists — getting wasted, urinating on sacred trees and photographing precious artifacts against direct orders. There’s intentional pleasure anticipating their comeuppance. But for as much time as we spend with them (at nearly 21⁄2 hours, the film is unnecessarily long), they’re also flat and uninteresting. Christian is especially lacking, a boyfriend so selfish, thoughtless and cowardly, it’s impossible to know what Dani ever saw in him, or to feel sympathy when one suspects horrors are about to be visited upon him.
And while the horrors in “Midsommar” are considerable, they’re also muted by familiarity. There are its many similarities to “The Wicker Man,” sure, but Aster is doubling back on his own limited work too, echoing so many of the individual elements that shocked and awed in “Hereditary”: a traumatic inciting incident, a wailing and grief-stricken woman, ominous symbols and totems, genetic deformities, graphic head trauma and elaborately posed corpses.
Even as you’re gasping and guffawing, you’re thinking:
IIt’s still effective and psychologically unmooring, thanks to the studied formalism of Aster’s filmmaking. But more than the technical precision, it’s the richness of Pugh’s performance that sells “Midsommar.” Like Toni Collette in “Hereditary” before her, Pugh is giving the pain her all, and through the elements of horror is offered a bloody pathway through her grief. Her ultimate catharsis, while awkwardly reached, is divine.
While “Midsommar” is too overwrought to be a masterpiece, it’s also too entertaining in its abject lunacy and assured in its craftsmanship to be considered a sophomore slump. Aster is a filmmaker still defining his voice, and despite the growing pains, “Midsommar” is an intriguing step in its evolution.