Do you like riddles? What’s ridiculous beyond comprehension, lacks any degree of common sense, is duller than an Antiques Roadshow marathon, and features unhinged lunatics behaving in disturbing ways as though they have had their brain surgically removed? No, it’s not the intellect-starved freak show ‘Love Island’, but something even more moronic: Ari Aster’s second horror feature that goes by the seasonally appropriate name of ‘Midsommar’. Caution: do not waste your time and money on this film if you value how you spend them. Stay well away, and choose ‘Toy Story 4’ instead. You won’t regret it.
Following a family tragedy, Dani (rising star Florence Pugh) accompanies her inattentive boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his boorish friends to a midsummer festival in rural Sweden of which minimal detail is given. What appears to be a pastoral, almost Eden-inspired idyll soon unfolds into a savage, terrifying trap. ‘Midsommar’ owes a substantial debt to cult horror ‘The Wicker Man’ for its exploitation of pagan mythologies for its scare content. Instead of succeeding, this stumbles and comes off as lazy and cringeworthy instead of making the hairs on the back of our necks stand up. I will say this, the film starts off okay with the focus on the relationship troubles between Dani and Christian, and their differing needs and expectations are articulated well. What ‘Midsommar’ takes the risk of doing is turn embedded conventions of horror movies on their head. Instead of haunted houses in bleak woodlands, the festivities ironically take place in a paradisal setting of open clearings, unclouded blue skies and welcoming locals dressed in white garments and flowery headbands. Sadly, the film’s problems begin no sooner than the unsuspecting teenagers’ arrival on spooky island.
Common logic has been left at the door of the writing room if it even got that far. After claiming she doesn’t know a word of Swedish, how is it that Dani is fluent after a few twirls around the maypole? How do not one of these university-educated people come up with a clever escape plan to fool the creepy locals? And who in their right mind can justify public execution as an act of merciful kindness? Slow-burners take their time drip-feeding small pieces of information that typically gain significance later on. This was no such thing: so consistently dull and boring was the experience (and the characters not least of all) that by the time the umpteenth teenager mysteriously disappeared, I no longer cared if any of their heads turned up on a stick as a trophy for whoever did such a noble thing. Horror as a genre is designed to unsettle and play on our minds. Almost everything that was meant to disturb me had the opposite effect of making me laugh uncontrollably at the sheer lunacy of what I was watching. Rest assured I didn’t spoil the film for anyone else in behaving like that idiot, as barely halfway through the guest numbers started diminishing in various walkouts.
The locals’ horribly incessant choral wailing during the insane rituals was very unsettling for the non-refundable 147 minutes I wasted on this painfully dreary and lifeless spectacle. A decent script could have saved the film from being the pure trash it was. Were it not for the creative decision for the characters to explicitly state everything going on in their heads, the film could have been mildly intriguing for at least a scene or two. The only satisfactory qualities are Florence Pugh and the underrated Will Poulter whose promising talents are misused here in a film that didn’t deserve them. Once ‘Midsommar’ reaches its disappointing, though eagerly awaited, conclusion, we are left puzzled as to what exactly we have spent nearly three hours enduring: a twisted relationship melodrama, a young woman’s religious awakening, a drug-fuelled hallucinatory nightmare, or not one but all of these things? For me it’s neither, just a midsummer night’s tedium. I left the cinema not only with a bladder about to fail, but the startling revelation that Dante’s tenth circle of hell features ‘Midsommar’ on repeat for the torturous punishment of its residents.
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