MIDSOMMAR
DIRECTORAri Aster
CASTFlorence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William
Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm BlomgrenPLOTWhen Dani (Pugh) gets an email from her
troubled sister, it heralds the start of a very bad
time in her life. Deciding to join her boyfriend
(Reynor) on a trip to Sweden, she hopes to draw
closer to him, but in fact will become entangled
with a cult that has designs on them both.OUT8 AUGUST
RATEDTBC/140 MINSHHHHH
[FILM]
VERDICTA visceral, unique, utterly fucked-
up experience that demands to be seen on the
big screen,Midsommaris the horror movie to
beat in 2019. Caution: contains distressing
amounts of folk music.ON SCREEN
TO ANYONE WHO might be worried that,
following the neck-slicing, demon-summoning
terrors ofHereditary, Ari Aster has gone
Hollywood: fear not. Or rather: fear. Because
instead he’s gone Hälsingland. For his second
feature film, the writer-director has conjured up
an even madder and more ambitious nightmare,
set in the remote wilds of northern Sweden and
featuring ingredients not usually found in scary
movies. The skies are blue. The sun is out. And
everywhere are angelic-looking characters,adorned with flowers and dancing merrily. It’s the
polar opposite of that bleak, cramped house in
Hereditary, yet Aster makes the experience every
bit as unsettling, orchestrating the descent from
paradise to, well, something else with clinical
precision. It’s a virtuoso, bone-shaking,
head-spinning experience. The vibe is hard to
shake off. And you might not be ordering from
Interflora again for a while.
The set-up is vaguelyHostel-y: after an
intense prologue in which an awful tragedy
befalls the family of Dani (Pugh), she, her
boyfriend Christian (Reynor) and his grad-
school buddies decide to head to Sweden
for a backpacking break. Dani and Christian
appear to be on the rocks: she’s afraid she’s
leaning too much on him, while his friends
urge him to ditch her and play the field. It’s
relationship drama played out with operatic
intensity, and with bold Asterian licks, like an
unflinchingly long shot of Dani on the phone,
making clear her mental state, or a slow zoom
through a dark window that feels like a plunge
into an abyss.
Then we get to Sweden. The film is in no
rush to introduce us to the ways of the Harga,
the peculiar, ever-smiling tribe who have taken
over an idyllic meadow surrounded by forest.
There’s a pause for a magic-mushrooms trip, and
for Christan’s sleazy pal Mark (Poulter) to leer at
Nordic women. When they do arrive at the
village, we are immediately immersed in ancientrituals that aren’t explained, activities that
may or may not be ominous playing out in
the background of frames. Aster and his set
decorator Henrik Svensson have likewise packed
the village’s structures with dense detail that
is left enigmatic, though there are clues that
something is definitely off. What’s in that big,
yellow triangle-shaped building? And exactly why
arethere so many penises etched on walls?
The shit that goes down — and there is a lot
of shit that goes down — is sure to inspire a
million memes. After a slow simmer, with the
village’s off-ness being ramped up degree by
degree, it finally reaches a boil in a climax that
makes the famous ending ofThe Wicker Man
look like a documentary on the Fyre Festival.
Despite the film’s focus seemingly having turned
away from Dani and Christian to the many exotic
distractions on display, it turns out it was still
a relationship drama after all, and both Pugh
and Reynor are extraordinary in a final reel that
pushes their characters in some truly extreme
directions.Midsommartests not only its players
but its viewers: it’s a ride, however, that any lover
of cinema should take.NICK DE SEMLYENClockwise from left:Dani (Florence Pugh); Midsommar’s
feast; The backpackers arrive; With Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren).