Midsommar, a two and a half hour nightmare from the mind of Hereditary’s Ari Aster is certainly a movie that will get you talking. Whether that discussion is about how it’s among the worst type of horror films as this review is about to be remains to be seen.
Dani (a totally game Florence Pugh) is in a strained relationship with Christian (Jack Reynor) that seems to have reached its final breath. However, a family tragedy halts what perhaps would have been a much needed end and has metastasized the awkwardness between the pairing. It is not helped when Christian’s friends (Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, and Vilhelm Blomgren) do not see it for her. When a kind of weird conversation leads to Dani accompanying them on their trip to Europe, its just the thing that could ruin a research trip. But her presence is only the tip of the iceberg of the craziness that is in store for everyone once they arrive.
Like most films, the success of Midsommar hinged on the characters, but the characters in Midsommar are completely insufferable in both their callous nature and in their stupidity. Not since The Invitation has a movie so fundamentally misunderstood humans and the capacity they have to want to stay in a terrible situation. There’s nothing in these characters that makes me believe they’d stay after they witness their first horror and yet, they do. From there, Midsommar just unfolds as a series of dumb decisions with no grounding in anything other than Aster wanting to move pieces around. These render the movie inert, cutting down any momentum that might have been gained from the jokes or horror. Aster’s script serves it’s character so poorly that audiences won’t be able to cheer for the deaths of the characters nor revel in their potential survival. That’s quite a feat for a horror movie to accomplish. It’s one thing to try and boil characters down to their essence and dark nature, but if you also boil away their basic humanity, there’s nothing left.
Aster is a gifted visual filmmaker, and even when the movie becomes its most infuriating, he can give you something to look at. He dares you to pay close attention from the first frame and one of the few joys I received from this movie was seeing exactly how the events would unfold to match the clues we’d been given. Aster doesn’t make us search too deep, as staging the action during the day time is quite nice as the characters and the audience can see what’s coming.
Midsommar is ultimately undone by a crisis of conviction about its themes, no doubt contributing to a ridiculous run time. Watching the movie twists and twists itself into a pretzel to hit all these beats (it’s a therapy session and cultural expose and a breakup movie and more) but doesn’t do any of those things particularly well, except the humor. Midsommar at its best when it’s being wickedly and darkly comedic, but unfortunately for audiences, that’s only about 20 minutes of the film.