Midsommar (

2019

) ½

I am now convinced that there is a secret conspiracy (funded primarily by A24) to remake all the fun horror movies of yesteryear as drab, pretentious art films. I first noticed this trend with It Comes at Night (2017) which re-imagined Dawn of the Dead (1978) as one of those filler episodes of The Walking Dead where nothing happens. Then there was The Eyes of My Mother (2016), a film that felt like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) on a fistful of Valium. Most recently on this site, we looked Suspiria (2018), an overlong, joyless remake of the classic Suspiria (1977) that replaced all the color and vibrancy of the original with gray monotony. Now the art house poachers have come for The Wicker Man (1973), a film that they are uniquely incapable of grasping because the secularization of Western society has rendered its most poignant themes obscure. Filmmakers who have never given a thought to the practical differences between a pagan and a Christian society are hopelessly unprepared to adapt such material (as evidenced by the godawful remake a few years back which totally neglected the original's theological implications). Younger filmmakers who were brought up on the empty-headed mantra that Christianity simply ruined everything in Western history are especially unprepared for the task of creating a convincing pagan society on screen because all they can do is imagine a utopia dotted with the odd human sacrifice. Tellingly, director Ari Aster shifts the focus from modern-day Norse pagan society that he sets his film in, and opts instead to focus on the horrors of the toxic relationship between his two lead characters.

It's a perfectly sound move in theory, as there are few mundane things that scarier than a bad relationship. Even those among us like me who have been spared from a truly horrible relationship, have probably seen second hand just what depressing, frightening shit show they can be. However, it begs the question, why bother setting your intimate horror film about toxic relationships in such an alien and unfamiliar environment? We all know what bad relationships look like, but almost nobody in the audience will know anything about pagan religious cults. Placing the mundane theme in an exotic setting runs the risk of undermining the relatability of the theme for most viewers. Sure, in theory, this could provide an interesting contrast, but it would be difficult to pull off and quite frankly Midsommar is not a film that is not up to the task. As the film progressed I couldn't help but wonder what sort of half-assed logic lead the director to combine these two ideas in such a lazy and unsatisfying way. A bit of research turned up the answer: Aster had already secured the backing of the Swedish government to make a film about pagan cults in the Swedish countryside when he went through a nasty breakup and decided that it would be best to focus Midsommar on the terror of intimate relationships. Consequently, Midsommar is a film that is internally at odds with itself, on one hand, it strives to be a subtle and artful story of inner turmoil along the lines of Repulsion (1965) and on the other, it looks towards the menacing external threats of The Hills Have Eyes (1977). A great film can have it both ways (look no further than The Shining (1980) for a great example of this), but Midsommar has obviously bitten off more than it can chew. It's a film that is at odds with itself from the premise onward and nearly all the problems of the film stem from this initial contradiction.

Perhaps it could have been made to work, were it not for absolute shallowness of the two lead characters. Everything we need to know about Dani Ardor and Christian Hughes will be paraded in front of the audience in the film's first ten minutes. She's a needy emotional wreck that uses her relationship as a crutch to prevent herself from doing the much-needed work of bettering herself, while he's emotionally distant and disinterested in her to the point that I have to wonder why the hell he's dating her at all. Surely he'd be happier and have more fun with a partner that was not a neurotic mess, and he certainly doesn't seem to love Dani enough to put up with her emotional needs. To be fair, Aster does not completely neglect his characterization, in one scene he gives one of his friends the unsatisfying explanation that he's still with Dani because he's afraid he'd regret breaking up if they did. It sounds like a motivation better suited to a high school kid than somebody in fucking graduate school, but I'd be lying if I said I had never met adults who didn't think like that. Indeed, I can think of no compelling reason for their relationship to continue at all until Dani's bipolar sister kills her parents and herself. At least then, Christian has a reason for staying with her, if only to soften the blow of repeated tragedy, although tellingly this semi-noble motivation is never articulated by Christian because that would make him too complex and interesting a character. We need him to be a scumbag, because otherwise his fate will be cruelly unfair, and moral complexity is something that modern audiences abhor. There is a stink of post #metoo male denigration that makes me suspect that Aster has a few skeletons in his closet that he's overcompensating for, though that is pure speculation.

Christian and his friends have been planning a trip to the Swedish countryside for months, where they will tour the strange commune where their friend Pelle was raised. In addition to Christian who admirably fills the role of The Athlete we are joined by Mark as The Fool, and Josh as The Scholar; The Whore and The Virgin are a bit too spicy for this movie, so they'll presumably be staying at home. Christian has no desire to bring Dani along with him, but he's too much of a wimp to stand up to her and tell her that their relationship is not really working so he offloads the problem onto his friends. Were I in their shoes, I'd invite Dani along just for spite, as dumping someone else's girlfriend should never be my responsibility. Pelle handles the situation the same way I would, but for vastly different reasons. He sees a glimpse of something special in Dani and thinks that she will be valuable to his people during their once-in-a-lifetime (every 90 years) Midsommar rituals. So off they go, some happier with the trip than others.

It was at this point that the flashy camera work and transitions began to make the jump from annoying to insufferable. At one point while they are driving to the commune the camera trails their car and then inverts so that up is down and down is up. Such a shot could be made to work, but Midsommar is nowhere near a fun enough movie to pull it off. At least when I've seen this trick done before its to show how fast the car is going, and the shot is correspondingly quick. Aster makes us languish for a time on this absurd shot like we're watching Vanishing Point (1971) on slow motion. Aster is on safer footing when he just pans in on his character at a flat angle, giving the audience time to drink in all the little mise-en-scene details he's arranged around the characters. When he goes for something more impressive, it often winds up looking completely ridiculous, like something out of a parody of The Wicker Man (1973) rather than a ripoff. It reaches a zenith of absurdity when Dani has a nightmare and Aster tries to mix his artfully composed shots with glimpses of gratuitous gore. There is a reason why Repulsion (1965) didn't go for the same level of gore as Blood Feast (1963), as seeing a delicate refined style alongside someone's head exploding only winds up looking stupid.

At first, we're led to believe that the inhabitants of Pelle's commune are just a bunch of hippies living in the wilderness and doing hallucinogens, getting by selling handicrafts and entertaining tourists. However, our perceptions are changed when, one day, after an elaborate ritual we see the community ritually sacrifice a pair of elderly people whose time had come. The problem is, that the members of the commune continue to act the same way that they have always acted, just generally being these normal boring hippies. At no point, even when they are carrying out ritual sacrifices, do these seem at all like the sort of people that would be capable of doing what they are doing. I don't want to belabor the point that this is an inferior remake of The Wicker Man (1973), but the pagans in that film felt alien from the world that we knew. They were happy sure, but also somewhat menacing and dangerous at the same time because they plainly operated on a different system of morality than the wider world. Midsommar's pagans are simply too worldly and too normal to give the same impression; maybe its the fact that everyone speaks flawless English, maybe its the fact that all their social systems (save the human sacrifice) are perfectly in line with modern standards, but somehow they are missing the element of unknown menace that is needed to make this style of backwoods horror work effectively. The whole pagan society feels completely surface level, all bombastic rituals, and no real substance.

There are also some considerable problems with plotting. Leave aside the fact that much of the movie is characters wandering around in a grassy field doing fuck-all. When the film does introduce plot threads they are abandoned with a speed that is quite frankly absurd. Take for instance the conflict introduced between Josh and Christian when Christian announced apropos of nothing that he wants to do his graduate thesis on the commune and their Midsommar ritual, a topic that Josh has already selected for himself. Nothing comes of this, because within a few scenes Josh is killed off, but nonetheless, there is a whole big discussion between the two characters as they debate this non-issue. There's even supporting scenes where Christian asks the village elders for permission to study their rituals and agrees to certain limitations about publishing names and places. None of this matters, because this is not a film about anthropologists digging too greedily and too deep into primitive cultures al la Cannibal Holocaust (1980). This is a film that is supposed to be about toxic relationships, but that theme quickly falls to the wayside only being brought up in a token form when Christian forgets Dani's birthday.

Midsommar is way too long and spends way too much of its run time spinning its wheels and giving you a picture of the (admittedly) very pretty Swedish countryside. I tend to stick away from absolute judgments on this site because when it comes to art, every rule has its exception, but I can think of no reason why a horror film should run as long as this one does, especially one that is as light on significant events as this one. Aster has a keen eye for spectacular shots, but I suspect that he has no idea of how to actually bring his character to these pre-planned vistas. He's a filmmaker desperately in need of a writing partner or editor to shave down all the unnecessary fat that he pads his movies with. To be fair, though at least a filmmaker who respects the audience enough to allow them the chance to figure out what is going on in the film for themselves. Take for instance a scene where the camera lingers on a mural depicting a young woman casting a love spell by putting her pubic hairs in the food of her beloved and her menstrual blood in his drink. Later on, we see a village girl has a crush on Christian, and sure enough, he discovers a hair in his meat pie and the careful viewer will note that his glass of lemonade is a shade pinker than everyone else's at the table (gross sure, but rather effective).

Many of the positive reviews of Midsommar that I read praised it for what it is not, namely that it is not another cookie-cutter jump-scare dependent modern horror movie starring a creepy doll. I agree that this trend is annoying and, at this point, effectively played-out (though I'll confess, The Conjuring (2013) and its imitators can be a laugh every now and then), but I'll add that like brilliance crap takes many forms. Midsommar is most assuredly crap, though of a different variety that Annabelle: Creation (2017). It does not fall neatly into any category or genre, but not because it transcends those limitations but rather because it falls short on all fronts. It cannot be a horror movie because it neither frightens nor thrills its audience; it fails as a picture of a modern-day pagan enclave because that faith of these pagans feels so empty and surface level; it cannot even succeed in what is supposed to be its primary goal, depicting a crumbling toxic relationship because the characters locked in this relationship are so shallow (despite a desperate performance from the two leads). To borrow a phrase from a similarly disappointing film, Midsmommar is not making the same mistakes again, it's making a set of entirely new ones. In the end, the only thing that Midsommar really has going for it are its arresting visuals, but since they are married to a script which is ultimately worthless, they themselves count for little. If we are willing to overlook bad writing, shallow characters, and somnolent pacing in favor of some snazzy visuals we've effectively lost our ability to critique Michael Bay films.