Midsommar (Film Review)
2019 A24
Written and Directed by: Ari Aster
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, and Will Poulter
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 147 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score (2019): 9/10
The Nicsperiment Score (2025 Rewatch): 7/10
Dani and Christian's relationship is faltering. Dani, herself medicated for some unexplained mental illness, is under constant stress that her bipolar sister will act out. Christian, tired of hearing about Dani's sister, would rather just hang with his Dani-hating bros. However, just as Christian starts to tinker with the idea of leaving Dani, the unthinkable happens, and Dani finds herself not just down a sister, but her entire family. Now, Christian's got no choice but to stick around, though all he seems to be able to offer Dani's heaving sobs is a pat on the back and a distant stare.
Cut to months later, and the couple are in a holding pattern. Christian (Jack Reynor) is attempting to get back to normal life with his pals. Meanwhile, the traumatized Dani (Florence Pugh, in a tour-de-force performance) spends most days in bed. A chance to change the status quo arrives, in the form of a trip to a remote commune in the forested hills of Sweden. Seems that not only is one of Christian's fellow-grad-student buddy's writing his thesis on just these sort of communities, but another is actually from one, and wants to take his friends back to his Scandinavian home to experience the midsummer celebration. Before you can say, hey, that's a weird coincidence...they're all on a plane to Stockholm.
If you've seen one Ari Aster film...you've seen half of Ari Aster's films. The young writer-director's first film, Hereditary, veered from family drama, with minutes upon minutes of realistic conversation and conflict, into full on horror, with minutes upon minutes of decapitations, reanimated corpses, and demonic possession. Midsommar is something completely different, but Aster is already developing some trademarks:a sublime fusion of hypnotic camera movements and lighting, and an interior mise en scène that at times feels like a wall of cubbyholes, from which a monster or a metaphor could spring at any moment. However, the most pervading aspect of an Aster film is the creator's patience.
Hereditary takes its time exploring and building up the family drama and conflict so that the finally revealed supernatural evils just feel like a logical evolution of already existing domestic horrors. Midsommar not only explores family, but community, empathy, and romantic relationships, as well...and when, instead of monsters, the strangely bizarre and unsettling, though still very hard-R happen, these more extreme events again feel like the natural growth of the themes Aster has already been exploring. I don't really want to talk about that, though. What I really want to talk about, what I'm still thinking and dreaming about, are the pretty pictures and sounds.
When the Americans enter this North Swedish paradise, they might as well be on another planet. The sun never sets, and everything is bathed in golden light. Beautiful music streams organically from the commune's musicians, welcome, yet without warning. All of Aster's film-making elements blend rapturously as a be-flowered Dani dances with a group of white-clad women around a maypole, as just maybe, the empathy-seeking Dani finds a new family. Aerial, symmetrical shots of people gathered around tables feel as orderly as nature. Wind rustles through the grass and treetops, and oh wait, what's that sticking out of the garden bed?
Dani and Christian's relationship is faltering. Dani, herself medicated for some unexplained mental illness, is under constant stress that her bipolar sister will act out. Christian, tired of hearing about Dani's sister, would rather just hang with his Dani-hating bros. However, just as Christian starts to tinker with the idea of leaving Dani, the unthinkable happens, and Dani finds herself not just down a sister, but her entire family. Now, Christian's got no choice but to stick around, though all he seems to be able to offer Dani's heaving sobs is a pat on the back and a distant stare.
Cut to months later, and the couple are in a holding pattern. Christian (Jack Reynor) is attempting to get back to normal life with his pals. Meanwhile, the traumatized Dani (Florence Pugh, in a tour-de-force performance) spends most days in bed. A chance to change the status quo arrives, in the form of a trip to a remote commune in the forested hills of Sweden. Seems that not only is one of Christian's fellow-grad-student buddy's writing his thesis on just these sort of communities, but another is actually from one, and wants to take his friends back to his Scandinavian home to experience the midsummer celebration. Before you can say, hey, that's a weird coincidence...they're all on a plane to Stockholm.
If you've seen one Ari Aster film...you've seen half of Ari Aster's films. The young writer-director's first film, Hereditary, veered from family drama, with minutes upon minutes of realistic conversation and conflict, into full on horror, with minutes upon minutes of decapitations, reanimated corpses, and demonic possession. Midsommar is something completely different, but Aster is already developing some trademarks:a sublime fusion of hypnotic camera movements and lighting, and an interior mise en scène that at times feels like a wall of cubbyholes, from which a monster or a metaphor could spring at any moment. However, the most pervading aspect of an Aster film is the creator's patience.
Hereditary takes its time exploring and building up the family drama and conflict so that the finally revealed supernatural evils just feel like a logical evolution of already existing domestic horrors. Midsommar not only explores family, but community, empathy, and romantic relationships, as well...and when, instead of monsters, the strangely bizarre and unsettling, though still very hard-R happen, these more extreme events again feel like the natural growth of the themes Aster has already been exploring. I don't really want to talk about that, though. What I really want to talk about, what I'm still thinking and dreaming about, are the pretty pictures and sounds.
When the Americans enter this North Swedish paradise, they might as well be on another planet. The sun never sets, and everything is bathed in golden light. Beautiful music streams organically from the commune's musicians, welcome, yet without warning. All of Aster's film-making elements blend rapturously as a be-flowered Dani dances with a group of white-clad women around a maypole, as just maybe, the empathy-seeking Dani finds a new family. Aerial, symmetrical shots of people gathered around tables feel as orderly as nature. Wind rustles through the grass and treetops, and oh wait, what's that sticking out of the garden bed?
2025 Rewatch Review:
I recently rewatched Hereditary and found it greatly lacking compared to when I first saw it in the theater. I figured I might as well rewatch Midsommar too, considering the last time I saw it was at the Baton Rouge cineplex in the summer of 2019.
I watched a 4K transfer of this film with my soundbar finely tuned, and somehow the movie looks and sounds even better than I remembered. In fact, Midsommar might be the best-looking film of 2019. It could even make an argument at best-looking film of that decade. Aster's eye and the production team's visual design produced somewhat of an aesthetic masterpiece where every image feels perfect, at least up until the weirdo sex scene late in the film, which I'm convinced is just Aster working out some of his kinks. The sound design is nearly as good as the visual, with each breeze and ancient Nordic instrument perfectly placed. Wow does this movie look and sound great.
The story and plotting left me a little colder in the theater, and just as the visuals and sound design have gone up in my estimation, the plotting and characters have gone down even more...much like they did with Hereditary. For one, I remembered what happened at the end of the film while watching this time and couldn't help thinking, "As soon as the events of this film conclude, international police are going to descend on this place. Six affluent, college-aged people missing from two different nations? It doesn't matter if their bodies are burned. Their DNA is EVERYWHERE. Interpol would tear this place apart. All of the kid's phones can be tracked to the nearest point at that location where apparently service goes out--everyone who knows the kids, knows they are going to their friend's commune, and it can't be far from that point. There are signs on the highway leading to it. The Hårga will be ripped apart.” I can suspend my disbelief to a degree, but this is an insane amount of suspension to ask. Then there are the characters.
Florence Pugh is great here. She has an incredibly expressive face, and Aster's incredible visual eye and the production team ensure she looks great in every frame, even when she looks ugly. Her character is loathsome by the end of this film, when she sends her hapless boyfriend, who couldn't help being poisoned, witchcrafted by pubes, and manipulated, to die in a fire. I HATE what happens at the end of this film, and not in a way that the ending feels like some kind of earned misery that I'm SUPPOSED to hate. I just hate it. It feels like some kind of weird, self-loathing wish-fulfillment by the director. I hate the smile in the last frame too. I hate all of the final 20 minutes here. I hate that all of the incredible visuals and sound are wasted on them.
But the visuals and sound are so incredibly good, so top tier, I can't help but give this film a positive score, more positive than Hereditary. But Midsommar HAS gone down in my post-2019 estimation.
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