Midsommer (2019)

Midsommer is described as "horror." Today we think of "horror" in a specific context of films, usually more appropriately associated with either "slasher" or supernatural films. The current trend dominating the box office is whatever sort of thing the Conjuring Universe is. Midsommer, the follow up to film maker Ari Aster's highly overrated Heredity, is nothing like those sorts of films. Aster follows more the example of the Haneke or Van Trier, making deeply unsettling movies about uncomfortable topics, often with a lot of shock value gore, but so far in a way that feels more straightforward and accessible than those film makers. Heredity flew closer to the mainstream horror esthetic but Midsommer is full on mainstreaming of that surrealist vibe. He's trying to bring that aesthetic to the masses and it feels like a cheap version of something richer.

He starts out strong by casting Florence Pugh who is revelatory in everything I've seen her in so far. He kicks off his story with a nice little uncomfortable situation of a severely damaged woman and her broken relationship. He then sets up the world of his story in a lovely pastoral northan Swedish community cut off from the world and bathed in almost 24 hour sunlight over the solstice. Perhaps this is where things start to feel a little cliched with the isolated exotic community. Like we all know we're supposed to fear foreigners, especially when we're far away and isolated, right?  It's from here that everything plays out in a manner that seems preordained. Each step feels like exactly what one would expect. The parties are welcomed, exposed to the "odd" culture of the strange community, enticed a bit by it before become horrified by it, and eventually swallowed whole buy it.

Little feels surprising in Midsommer. Each twist is telegraphed a long way out. Instead of surprising us with events, Aster seems more interested in shoving gore and other unpleasant images in our faces. Very similarly to Heredity he chooses to use imagery to shock us instead of the acts of people. In both films I felt he relies on our learned prejudices to unsettle us, not in a way that challenges those prejudices, but in a manner which revels in them. For example in both films he uses "deformities" as a signalling of evil, here even more directly than in Heredity.  This is a common film trope but one that I had hoped most cinema in this day had moved past. Perhaps he comfortable bringing it back. He also uses naked old people naked to make us squirm. Again, not something new, we often see it in horror, very recently in the Susperia remake which also felt like it was just recycling old ideas of what is supposed to be scary. Again I usually prefer something more originally upsetting than that.

There is a scene half way through which I felt both worked and then didn't for a number of reasons. There is a bit of a spoiler here so skip this paragraph if you don't want to know. He builds some tension for us by having two elderly people throw themselves from a cliff and then has our "heroes" react. Despite having this be obviously where the film was going (anyone who is surprised by the sacrifice simply isn't paying attention) I felt the scene was moving because of the different ways the characters reacted to it, their revulsion, their rationalizations, their anger, their discomfort. I felt the film was truly getting somewhere with this. But then Aster chose to focus on the physicality of the deaths. He focused on what happens to a body when it is thrown from a cliff and lands on rock. We see it. This in itself isn't a bad choice. I always think films that make us feel violence are better than films that gloss over violence. But it is how the film becomes about exploiting that gore instead of focusing on how we are to feel about people being sacrificed. It lessons it, makes it about being revolted by blood instead of by cruelty. Similarly the cult like sex ritual at the end feels less unsettling because of the rape that technically happens during it and more because we see naked old people (ew??) and it is used in a more comic form, so we can let off some of our discomfort by laughing. Again it distracted from the part I felt was starting to be interesting. 

There is a character I found the most fascinating, who the film mostly ignores. Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle, once you understand his whole arc, is someone I wanted to know more about. His motivations and desires throughout. The one character the film actually surprises us with, who doesn't act like a complete stereotype. But he is mostly sidelined so we can follow the lives of the far less interesting comic relief characters and the dysfunctional relationship. I guess I always felt that when Aster was on to something I found interesting, he veered away into something far less interesting and often more juvenile. 

His inversion of setting his scary story in the light instead of the dark seems interesting at first. It's about putting it all in front of our eyes and not being able to look away. But again what he makes us look at feels empty-ish and not really that disturbing. When I saw Heredity I remember being disappointed that all it was was about being scared of, well, women. Here again, Aster tells a story about men being victimized by women. I guess I just don't find that very interesting or scary or disturbing. I find it a little boring.

Like I said his work reminds me of Van Trier and Haneke, film makers I find are often more focused on form than content and so far I feel Aster's work is like that too. That while I may appreciate the way they make their films, the stories they tell have either little resonance for me, or a resonance that is quite ugly.

Midsommer
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhem Blomgren, Will Poulter
Writer/Director: Ari Aster