Director Ari Aster on
the unique challenge of
following up 2018’s shock
smash HereditaryThe daylight setting is no gimmick,
but how Aster creates what he calls “an
adult fairy tale with horror elements” in a
bid to “push different buttons to
Hereditary”, moving away from viscerally
frightening audiences in favour of
disturbing them with something weird and
eerie. He cites Alice In Wonderland — the
sinister, surreal book, not the cartoon
— as a reference point, one that’s apparent
in the trailer that shows indefinably creepy
images of people smiling in ways too stiff
to be friendly, in a setting too perfect and
still to be welcoming.
“The dark is very useful for building
suspense,” says Aster. “What might be
hiding in the shadows? This film is not
playing with that. It’s the imagery and the
ideas that are going to get under people’s
skin. I hope there’s an atmosphere of
menace and dread that benefits from the
unchanging [daylight]”. And don’t expect
any traditional jump scares, to ramp up
and diffuse tension. “I don’t think there
are any in Midsommar,” he says. “Mostly
because I don’t like experiencing them.”
Aster’s approach offered no easy
shortcuts to scaring his audience, or indeedto filmmaking. “I hadn’t anticipated quite
how hard it is to film entirely in daylight,”
he groans. “You’re constantly chasing the
sun. It hit me on day one: ‘Oh shit, every
day we’re going to be battling continuity
errors because of the sun.’”
After a whole film in the harshness
of daylight, Aster might choose to retreat
back to the safety, and production ease,
of shadows. OLLY RICHARDSMIDSOMMAR IS IN CINEMAS FROM 8 JULYTop to bottom:
Dani (Florence Pugh)
and Josh (Jack Reynor)
might give the “crazy
nine-day festival” a miss
next year...; Director
Ari Aster keeps even
the dark moments
bathed in light;
Disembowelling a bear
workshop, anyone?WITH LAST YEAR’S Hereditary, debut
feature director Ari Aster made one of
the darkest horror movies of the decade.
Family secrets, that decapitation scene,
and visuals that rarely let light in made
for a film of extreme, oppressive dread.
For his second film, Aster is again trying
to redefine horror. And making life really,
really hard for himself in the process.
Midsommar takes place entirely in
daylight, the natural enemy of horror.
Set in a sun-drenched Swedish village,
the film follows Florence Pugh’s Dani,
a young woman “at a very difficult time
in her life,” Aster says. “She’s clinging to
a relationship that’s on its last legs [with
a boyfriend played by Will Poulter].”
Joining him at a festival in the village, the
couple’s romantic problems become the
least of her worries when friendly locals
start to give off a strong cult-y vibe.Ari Aster spoke to Empire
on the phone from New
York on 19 April, as he
completed
post-production.The difficult
second
horror film