31 Days of Horror: Midsommar

Directed by Ari Aster.

2019. Rated R, 148 minutes.

Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Isabelle Grill, Julia Ragnarsson, Henrik Norlen, Gunnel Fred, Anna Astrom.

    I have no idea where this is going. Normally, I sit down to write a review knowing how I feel about the film in question and a general idea of what I'm going to write. When I finished watching Midsommar I wasn't sure how I felt about it so I let it marinate for a couple days. Still nothing. As the saying goes, writers write. Often, we do so to help us figure things out. So, let's get figuring.

    Like many of the best horror movies, this one takes its time creating an atmosphere, layer by layer. The first impulse of people like me is to call films that do this "a slow burn." In reality, it's more like the slow ascent of a rickety rollercoaster before its initial drop. I mean the ones you aren't sure how they're standing because they're mostly rotting wood and splinters. Every clink you hear as you get closer to the clouds adds pounds per square inch of dread. When you reach the ride's apex, the pressure on your nerves is immense and you have no choice but to fall and hope you survive. Midsommar mimics this. Nearly every second that goes by, we know its going to get worse. Even better, we don't trust the moments when it's fun.

    Our cinematic rollercoaster ride begins as Dani (Pugh) is starting hers. She's been frantically trying to get in touch with her parents and/or her sister Terri, who has been missing all that time. Meanwhile, her almost saintly boyfriend Christian (Reynor) repeatedly sticks up for her to his friends who all think she's clingy and getting in their way of hooking up with the hordes of beautiful women they imagine waiting for them. After some time going back and forth with those storylines, we find out Terri killed herself and her parents. To help Dani cope, Christian invites her to go on a trip with him and the guys to Sweden. Specifically, the gang is all going to the commune where his buddy Pelle (Blomgren) grew up. Rounding out the crew are super intellectual Josh (Harper) and super douche Mark (Poulter). When they all get to the commune, lots of strange things start happening that get progressively weirder and more disturbing, seemingly by the minute. Clink...clink...clink.

    The film's greatest strength might also be its biggest weakness. It is laser focused on Dani. Every frame of it is there for us to see how this situation affects her, even those that don't include her. We dive deep into her psychology. We know the trauma she's suffered and how fragile she is. Seemingly benign things might cause a breakdown. We know she's vulnerable, and emotionally dependent on Christian. She wants to be liked by his friends. As long as they want to do something, she'll play along in order to not be the killjoy. She's searching for strength, but is unsure where to find it. We know her from core to crust. 

    The same cannot be said of anyone else. It's natural that secondary characters don't get as much development as the protagonist. In this case, they get none. Each is quickly shown to be a type, and they never stray from it. I have to stress that I watched the theatrical cut of the film, not the three-hour director's cut, but two-and-a-half hours should still be plenty of time. Josh is the intellectual whose entire life revolves around his thesis for his doctorate. Mark is a horny man-child. Pelle is the smiling native/tour guide. Given the decaying nature of the situation around them I wanted more of how they were bothered, or not bothered. Christian eventually gets more involved in the proceedings, but he is essentially a flat character like the rest. I will go to bat for him, a bit, though. In the one synopsis I read of the film, he is described as emotionally distant. I see why, but I disagree. Time and again, he goes out of his way to support her, to make sure she's comfortable, to keep her safe. He only backs off at her insistence that she's okay. He may be a bit closed off with his own emotions, but he's certainly attentive to hers.

    Another consequence of solely focusing on Dani is that there is no singular opposing personality for her. However, that works well in the movie's favor. We're stuck trying to figure out if all the madness is directed at her, for her benefit, or if she's just one of the herd that happens to have brought along more personal baggage than the others. She's doing the same. Florence Pugh helps us tremendously. She expertly portrays a person barely held together by slimmest sliver of hope. And that light is dimming. The surreal situation she finds herself in threatens to shred her soul. Toni Collette plays a similar role in director Ari Aster's first feature, Hereditary. The difference is that Collette's character held firm to the idea of her own autonomy even as it slipped from her grasp. Her ultimate undoing came from the blood in her veins. Pugh's Dani is dealing with the inverse. Everything seems to be collapsing on her and she seems powerless to stop it. Pugh makes us want to coddle her and whisk her away. We want to tuck her into a comfy bed, give her hot cocoa, and assure her everything will be okay. We can't. And that's where the power of the film lies. We're as helpless as she seems to be because we're unable do those things. We can only watch her world crumble around her and hope she finds the fortitude to rebuild it. 

    Aster uses all of this and more to draw us to the edge of our seat. Only two films deep into his directorial career and he's already proven to be a master of suspense. I don't mean in the 'whodunit' sense that we tend to think of it, but in the way he conjures anxiety. The original master, Alfred Hitchcock, gave us some fascinating insights on this, often by discussing how a bomb is used in a movie. One of his most famous quotes about suspense is "There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it." He expands it by talking about two different cinematic situations - one where a bomb suddenly explodes, and one where the audience sees the bomb and knows it's going to explode while the characters have no idea it's there. Basically, the latter situation is what suspense is made of. We want to warn the people on the screen and get them out of there. We become emotionally invested in their well-being. Aster places the bomb for us to see early on. He then makes it increasingly stressful for the audience because he keeps setting bombs. Even things that seem to be bangs are actually the setting of more explosives to rattle our nerves. When detonation finally happens, we're blown back in our seats. We reach for the various pieces to put them back together, but can't tell how they fit.

    That last thing is why I wasn't sure where this review was going. Normally, we get to the end of a film and quickly assess our feelings on it. Those feelings are often based on how the story turns out. We can love or hate a movie with either a happy or sad ending because we can pinpoint what about it appeals to or repulses us. Movies with ambiguous endings are tougher. They require us hashing it out with ourselves and/or others. When the credits roll on Midsommar we're spent from that rollercoaster ride, having been whipped to and fro and thrown violently through loops all the while worried that the pile of sticks that make up the frame will give way beneath us. Then we look over at Dani in the seat next to us. We don't know what to make of her condition other than to say it disturbs us. So does this film. At the end of the day, that's what great horror is about - digging into the grooves of our brain and making us squirm. Midsommar makes us squirm.