I don’t like sweet potato fries, I loathe the writing of Charles Dickens, the verbal pacing of anime throws me off, and on the movie front? I was unmoved (and been told I didn’t understand) Stalker (1979) or Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Joining that august fraternity is Midsommar (2019) a folk horror film by Ari Aster who decides to play in the long shadow cast by The Wicker Man. It wasn’t for me.
Headlining the show is Dani (the always great Florence Pugh) a young woman reeling from a family tragedy who tags along with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his grad student buddies to visit a traditional midsummer festival in Hårga, an isolated commune in Sweden.
Acting as host is Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), a local boy returning to his home village, Josh (William Jackson Harper aka The Good Place’s Chidi) who is doing a thesis on midsummer ceremonies and Mark (Will Poulter) who is just looking for a good time and is surprisingly not the first one to die.
I’ll skip over the details, because like Tarkovsky there’s a lot of beautiful shots of nothing happening. Filmed in Hungary during the hot summer, the endless blue skies against the green fields of Hårga capture the feel of a Nordic midnight sun. They are probably also meant to serve as a juxtaposition of an idyllic scene against the ominous events
I’d mention the ominous events, but they aren’t that ominous. Strange rituals in a foreign language are a little off putting, sure, but I grew up in New Jersey. You get invited to seders, or meet a friend’s grandmother who only speaks Italian, or hang out in a diner where you overhear conversations in a dozen languages. Heck, I once even went to a Protestant mass!
And then, back in Hårga, the murders start, which prompts Connie and Simon, a pair of visitors who hail from Common Sense, England to announce their immediate departure. After being told told that brutally assisted suicide is just a quaint village tradition the rest of the group decides to stay.
In what I can say is a new twist on ignoring the danger around them? Both Josh and Christian see anthropological gold and decide they are going to write their theses on Hårga’s quaint and murderous customs. In their defense, they are also addled by non-stop consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms which may be why they fail to notice their numbers dwindling one by one, starting with the sensible British contingent.
While there are some gruesome scenes, most of the actual murders happen off screen, because otherwise we would interrupt the 141 minute runtime with actual events happening. Instead we are treated to awkward dinners, strange dances, peculiar rituals and the other trappings familiar to anyone who has ever attended a wedding. There’s a reason this movie was seen as a comedy when it was released in Sweden.
(GORE WARNING: Yes, there is gore, lots of it, but outside of a few moments it is mostly static gore. Bodies are gruesomely mutilated and then the camera lingers on them because, really, the special effects people worked hard on it. Expect long long scenes where dead bodies are on display.)
If you like this sort of thing, great, but it takes different strokes to move the world. Pugh as always is a terrific actress and I’ve gotta give props to Reynor for striking a blow for equality and electing to do his escape scene in the nude. The ending is meant to be ambiguous but I really don’t see that Dani had any other choice.
Oh and Josh completely crossed the line. As an anthropology grad student he should have known better than to try that stunt. You’d also think he’d have recognized the nature of the traditions he was embedded in and recognized where they were heading, but ces’t la vie.
