‘Midsommar’: Ari Aster Tackles Grief, Gaslighting & Cults In A Folk Horror About The Relationships You Need To Leave, ASAP [Review]

Plumbing the depths of his dysfunction, filmmaker Ari Aster generated an unbearable tension with his icy family horror debut “Hereditary.” By way of “Ordinary People,” and the moody chilliness of Ingmar Bergman, that immaculately crafted, meditative arthouse horror—a 2018 breakout Sundance hit— immediately transformed Aster’s career, turning him into horror auteur to watch. Turning once more to his traumas, a painful break up, Aster’s follow-up film, “Midsommar,” is ambitious, aesthetically gorgeous and freakish, but much like Jordan Peele—a contemporary director that hit a home run the first time at bat, but stumbled a bit with his impressive, but muddled, follow-up swing—his sophomore effort is disarrayed and lacking the emotional intensity of his debut.

“Midsommar” occupies the unique space in the dysfunctional relationship genre rarely traced in movies. Its relationship is broken, and relatively toxic, but not violently so. Like the gas leak that creates the anguish which the movie springboards from, “Midsommar” tracks the silent, but deadly ambivalent relationship that doesn’t really justify its own existence, but continues forward for feeble reasons marked by cowardice, hesitance, and uncertainty; its own kind of malevolence.

A seemingly needy Dani (Florence Pugh) is in love with Ph.D. student Christian (Jack Reynor), who doesn’t really reciprocate her affections, but is too weak to do anything about it, despite the urging of his friends, including the obnoxious and chauvinistic Mark (Will Poulter). On the verge of a breakup, a huge, dark tragedy in Dani’s family sideswipes everything. Dani wracked with grief, Christian decides to stay to comfort her, but still operates with one foot out the door. Already interested in anthropologic and folkloric studies, Christian jumps at the chance to take a summer trip to remote Scandinavia—the ancestral home of Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), a Swedish exchange student and member of Christian’s inner circle boys club which also includes Josh, a rival Ph.D. student (William Jackson Harper).

There’s one problem. Dani isn’t invited. She soon finds out, however, doesn’t really get the hint, and insinuates herself onto the trip. In bucolic, sunkissed Sweden, Pelle’s commune turns out to be something more of a religious hippie commune (cult alert) preparing for a midsummer solstice festival. Naturally, what seems like an empathetic, harmonious, and pretty utopia of nature, soon goes askew and horrific. Cults gonna cult, in short.

And this is where the movie also loses its grip on its big ideas of reciprocity, grief, gaslighting, and relationships that need to die. Sure, Aster’s film has lots of connective thematic ideas of death, renewal, dissolution, and things that need to be put out of their misery while his drama turns into more of a traditional horror—each character picked off one by one, etc.—but these ideas also just tend to take a backseat to the concept of a freakish cult coming into full bloom. Or rather, like the oversaturated, overlit sunshine that consumes the film, something that was always there in plain sight, finally coming into view.

In this regard, Aster’s “Midsommar” is as thoughtful as his last movie. Visually, aesthetically and thematically, it’s all doing a pagan ritual dance that circles around the ideas of anguish and heartache and worse—the relationship you know, if you’re honest with yourself, that isn’t meant to be. And yet still, with all of this considered, “Midsommar” still gets lost and murky in its ideas of relationships vs. its notions of the encroaching horror around the main characters. The two don’t quite track, at least not meaningfully.

Aster’s movie— a slow-moving 2 hours and twenty minutes— eventually turns into a “Wicker Man“-like experience, but it’s also so very predictable. From Pelle’s first arch smile, you know trouble awaits in this odd Swedish village with its uneasy and bizarre traditions (the GET OUT while you can dueling metaphor). And yep, after some ill-advised mushroom trips, attempts at getting laid and internecine squabbling over academic squatters rights (all the students see a goldmine of historical riches for their respective theses), horrors eventually blossom.

Impeccably shot and staged, with some terrific camera orchestration throughout—-particularly in the festive dance sequences—there’s so much to admire, but often, so little to feel. It’s a distancing movie. Dani, the central character feels more like a wallflower wisp than a flesh and blood character, and it’s hard to relate or empathize with her despite a reliable Florence Pugh performance. As the narcissistic, thoughtless boyfriend—playing in that interesting space of unintentional douchebag, albeit one who does more harm than good— Jack Reynor seems like the most unlikely Ph.D. student of all time. That said, the movie does afford him some sympathy, which offers him some complexity. He’s the unintentional problem, but so is Dani, the film says, in her willingness to be a doormat and never trust herself.

So, as a relationship movie, “Midsommar” has some interesting observations on its mind of the co-dependent complicity in relationship blame; there’s undoubtedly self-censuring qualities too, as if Aster is self-flagellating for all the mistakes he made. But as a horror, as crazy and freaking and bizarre as it is—and funny, really really absurdly and wickedly inappropriately amusing—it’s honestly a bit rote with few significant surprises.

The movie telegraphs from second one that it’s going down a road of perversity, and unholy grotesquery, it takes that path, but not much of it is really all that emotional, impactful or even shocking (yes, the random, errant bear ends up factoring into the movie in a horrific outlandish way, later on, color me surprised).

Admirable, ambitious and impressive, but ultimately aloof, “Midsommar” has its delights for sure, but it lacks the emotional depth to match the sharp insights it has into the evils of the ambivalent, wishy-washy relationship (run as fast as you can). In the end, with its notions of “new blood,” Aster’s “Midsommar” is a torch and a purge, asking the characters to set their pain on fire and liberate themselves from the abuse they’ve actively participated in. “Midsommar” is its own kind of cautionary tale, a floral, psychedelic, “He’s Just Not That Into You” for movie-going culture. About the excuses, we give ourselves to stay in relationships, and the crime of habit and dependency we often commit in broad daylight, Aster’s movie is an intelligent argument against ineffectual relationships. I just wish I could love it back. [C+]