Mid­som­mar

Hav­ing announced him­self in glo­ri­ous­ly deranged fash­ion with his debut fea­ture Hered­i­tary, writer/​director Ari Aster has quick­ly been her­ald­ed as a new har­bin­ger of doom when it comes to hor­ror. His 2018 famil­ial freak­out saw Toni Col­lette take on the role of a life­time as Annie Gra­ham, and made Mil­lie Shapiro’s Char­lie pos­si­bly the most unnerv­ing child since Dami­an Thorn. When Aster’s sec­ond fea­ture, Mid­som­mar, was announced, star­ring woman-of-the-moment Flo­rence Pugh and set amid the tra­di­tion­al fes­tiv­i­ties of an iso­lat­ed Swedish com­mu­ni­ty, antic­i­pa­tion quick­ly began to grow.

It’s a strange thing to be so bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed by a film that should, in the­o­ry, be right up your street. It doesn’t hap­pen often, but the sting is always the same when it does. Per­haps the relent­less all-con­sum­ing hype machine is part­ly to blame, bol­stered by hyper­bol­ic first-look reac­tions from US crit­ics and a cease­less tide of meme-able pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al. Even so, Midsommar’s fail­ings run deep­er than it being unable to live up to expec­ta­tions: its chief prob­lem is that it essen­tial­ly rehash­es a sto­ry Aster has already told.

As in Hered­i­tary, the film’s pro­tag­o­nist, Dani (Pugh) is cop­ing with a fam­i­ly tragedy. Her boyfriend Chris­t­ian (Jack Reynor) is try­ing to be sup­port­ive, but has been debat­ing break­ing up with her for some time, encour­aged by his pals Mark (Will Poul­ter), Josh (William Jack­son Harp­er) and Pelle (Vil­helm Blom­gren). In an attempt to lift Dani’s mood, Chris­t­ian invites her on the boys’ trip to Pelle’s home­town in rur­al Swe­den to attend a sum­mer sol­stice fes­ti­val. Not long after their arrival, the group begins to realise there is some­thing more sin­is­ter at play in the com­mu­ni­ty, unset­tled by vio­lent rit­u­als that sit in stark con­trast to the appar­ent seren­i­ty of the locals.

Where Hered­i­tary offered an inti­mate por­trait of fam­i­ly tur­moil and fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate, Mid­som­mar seems less inter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing com­pelling char­ac­ters. Pugh is giv­en pre­cious lit­tle to do oth­er than sniv­el soft­ly or wail like a ban­shee, her grief nev­er explored in a sat­is­fy­ing man­ner. Mean­while Reynor spends most of the time look­ing either con­fused or com­plete­ly blank. Poul­ter and Jack­son Harp­er don’t fair much bet­ter, their roles so triv­ial it’s as if their inclu­sion was an afterthought.

The film is far more pre­oc­cu­pied with its dreamy pas­tel aes­thet­ic than pro­vid­ing any real sub­stance to its plot or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Blonde mop­pets in crisp white cot­ton gar­ments scam­per through the lush sur­round­ings, a cer­e­mo­ni­al stone is stained red with blood, life blos­soms all around while sev­er­al char­ac­ters meet a sticky end. Yet none of these images feel par­tic­u­lar­ly orig­i­nal or, even in the con­text of a creepy cult prac­tic­ing strange rit­u­als, shocking.

Aster repeats sev­er­al nar­ra­tive beats and recy­cles numer­ous motifs from Hered­i­tary, and while there’s cer­tain­ly no harm in carv­ing a niche for your­self as a film­mak­er, after the wild inven­tive­ness of his debut this feels like a less ful­ly-formed con­cept – a col­lec­tion of arrest­ing iconog­ra­phy that doesn’t quite come togeth­er. The intrigu­ing con­cept of the pagan fes­tiv­i­ties is nev­er ful­ly explored, and the gore feels odd­ly sedate, ren­der­ing Mid­som­mar a strange­ly tooth­less beast. For gen­uine hor­ror at the hands of col­lec­tive mad­ness, you’re bet­ter stick­ing with The Wick­er Man or Kill List.