Midsommar is the second film by Ari Astor who made a big splash with his first cerebral/weird horror flick Hereditary last year. Hereditary was an acquired taste, a slow burn, a moody art house horror flick with a freak-out ending. I was 85% there and then lost me at the end. Midsommar is his follow-up so I was very curious to see if he could nail it this time. And I think he did… as far as what odd indie horror angle he was going for. Mass audiences will probably be even more turned off by this one though.
So Midsommar follows three American friends visiting their Swedish friend’s home/commune in Sweden. They are welcomed with open arms by the townsfolk… they are about to hold their midsummer celebration (in the Land of the Midnight Sun… so it never gets dark). Everyone is dressed in flowing white traditional garb and they dance and feast and dance and feast some more. This being a horror film, it takes some time for the Americans to realize, “Hey, I think this is some kind of cult”. And then things get bloody. And then things just keep going for another ninety minutes.
This film is best described as a series of ever tightening, slow but beautiful spirals. Winding inwards with a kind of skin-crawling dread… we know what kind of movie this is, we’ve seen it many times before so we’re just waiting for the shoe to drop. It’d have gone better if these young Americans had seen The Wicker Man… that might have been their clue to run.
This version of the “surprise cult” film is targeting the art house, almost experimental film market… it’s 2 1/2 hours long and spends an inordinate amount of time showing us the community’s celebration and rites (most of which are wholesome enough). And even if it ultimately goes in the freak-out weird direction I expected, I couldn’t quite take my eyes off the screen. Regardless of where I fall on this film in the long run, that’s the ultimate truth. I was compelled to keep watching, to ignore any calls to nature, because I didn’t want to miss a thing.
And I’m not going to exactly say this is a bad movie… but I will say that once those constricting circles constricted and we get the expected ending, I was left a little, “Ok, what was that REALLY all about though?” It felt like the film maker was maybe not appreciating my time and was really into seeing if he could make a bright, sun-shiny cult movie last as long as he possibly could. And he stretches that running time and its resulting “well, here’s another set of vaguely unsettling cult celebrations” moments to the breaking point. But, like I said, it worked in the moment for me.
That said, this is clearly an unusual and atypical horror film that will certainly drive away mass audiences. And the more artsy fartsy movie crowd might get turned off by the quick-but-lingered-upon shockingly gory freak-out moments. There’s not a lot of screen time devoted to them but when it presents it, the camera is all up in that blood splatter.
So, yeah, this movie came out this weekend as a bit of July 4th and Spider-Man counter-programming. I’m not sure how well it’ll do… but fans of more thoughtful, even arty horror flicks will probably enjoy it. It’s not intended to be a mass-market film even if it opens wide. I think many will be bored by it and others disgusted… but if you like a daring, gorgeous-looking film that goes for ongoing unsettling over jump scares, then this might be for you.
Score: 85