You have to admire Ari Aster and the A24 studio’s commitment to making Midsommar an incredibly unique-feeling horror story. We’re so accustomed to shadowy boos popping out at night and jump scares, it’s refreshing to see a scary movie that puts its terror out in broad daylight. It takes some time for us to realize the insanity of what’s actually happening. Once it’s revealed, it’s a pretty visceral shock.
This is helped by a great lead performance on Florence Pugh’s part, capturing what’s at times overwhelming portrayals of grief, wonder and eventually terror that don’t fall into self-parody. As Dani, a college student who’s traveling with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) to Sweden for his research on a strange community called the Harga, she’s still in emotional recovery after the tragic loss of her parents and sister in a double murder-suicide.
It’s a rather dark set-up, which makes it all the easier to empathize with Dani, on top of serving as a smart lead-in to the seemingly hospital village. From the opening scenes with Dani getting another concerning text message from her bipolar sister to receiving the terrible confirmation, all the scenes are cast in dark. How fitting that instead of stepping inside the usual cliche haunted house, she finds herself wrapped in a small town that loves sunlight, singing and hospitality, where surely she’ll find some comfort while grieving, right? Right?
Vilhelm Blongren is deceptively inviting and warm as Pelle, a member of the commune and friend of Christian and Dani who’s invited them to the Harga’s mid-summer festivities. While Christian argues with fellow college student Josh (William Jackson Harper) over their thesis and their clueless friend Mark (Will Poulter) accidentally wanders into trouble, Dani can’t help but feel something’s amiss about these people.
The strange, graphically and often sexually violent cartoons found around the village (that hint at the madness that’s about to unfold) don’t help to ease her tension, nor do the hallucinogenic mushrooms that cause her to have visions.
The most crucial arcs in Midsommar are Dani’s search for a family after her loss, and her dynamic with Christian. As a conversation between him and his friends to start the movie indicates, the movie is a chronicle of their deteriorating relationship through the lens of some pretty subversive horror. Reynor has an interesting sense of emotional cluelessness and distance to his performance, which would be a problem in another role but works for how this story eventually unfolds.
He doesn’t offer much in the way of comfort to Dani after they and the audience witness a ritual that earns this movie a well-deserved R-rating. Later Chritisnam meets a village girl, and their time together leads to Dani making a traumatizing discovery.
Though there are aspects in Midsommar taken from real-life cultures, Ari Aster’s able to weave these different elements together in order to create a very fascinating world for Florence Pugh to play off of. Her continued grief continued bizarre visions (including how the flowers around her seem to shift in form, thanks to some good CGI work) and fragile mental health leaves her more open to the Harga’s manipulation, who crown her their “May Queen “ during their dance festivities. The responsibilities that come with this role are certainly something to behold.
I feel Midsommar is generally a good mix of highbrow, artsy film-making (with a dash of a “breaking up” story) from Aster, even if some parts of it come off more confusing and unsettling rather than terrifying. But this is mostly in line with things you’d usually expect from A24, that sense of atmospheric and detailed direction along with stories that try to surprise their audiences.
This movie’s basic gimmick is “a false sense of security”, and it does a good job engrossing the characters- and the viewers along with them- into what seems at first like an outgoing and hospitable community, and maintaining a believably cultish atmosphere even as the horrors are gradually exposed.
Mix that with a strong lead performance on Pugh’s part, and you’re left with a rather original and uncompromising art film that I can gladly recommend if they’re looking to be freaked out in a different way from the usual scary movie fare. If you’d invited yourself to this extremely twisted but seemingly pleasant party, stop by @Official_FAN on Twitter and let’s have a discussion about this!