Midsommar (2019) Review

As a co-host and producer of The Horrific Podcast, I spend a lot of time watching horror movies. I see a lot of survivors hiding from zombies in malls, teenagers hiding from killers in masks, and people pretending like everything’s normal is clearly haunted houses. Because of this, I get really excited when I hear about a new horror movie from a creative director who has previously gone outside the box. That said, I was wildly excited for Ari Aster’s second feature film Midsommar.

While Aster’s previous film, Hereditary, wasn’t the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, I did enjoy his directing style and storytelling. Hereditary felt fresh and interesting and kept me engaged the whole time. After being slightly underwhelmed by Us and sitting through the paint-by-numbers Conjuring-universe movies this year, I was very excited for another Aster film. The trailers looked creepy AF, and I was intrigued to see how it would build on the momentum of Hereditary.

I saw Midsommar in a full theater on a Saturday night at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar in Austin, Texas. There was pleasant chatter throughout the previews, and then a reverent silence took hold as the A24 logo flashed on the screen. The next two and a half hours were certainly a unique experience, but in the end I left the theater feeling disappointed.

The Good

This was an excellent movie from a production standpoint. The camera work and visuals were great. Some of the cg was a little distracting, but it mostly worked for the desired effect. I think the acting was mostly good, and the characters played the roles that were written for them pretty well. The sound mixing and editing were professionally done and not distracting. I noticed a lot of foley that I wouldn’t have thought to add that worked well in many scenes that would have otherwise been silent.

As someone who watches a lot of horror movies, I see a lot of movies made on shoestring budgets that make rookie mistakes with sound, lighting, and camera work. I also take in a lot of distractingly bad acting and visual effects. This movie had none of those problems, and I actually really enjoyed all of the production aspects.

The Bad

A disclaimer: I went into this movie expecting a deeply disturbing horror film. You might say that as someone who spends a lot of time with the horror genre, I was projecting expectations about things that the movie never claimed to be. I’d argue, however, that the trailers and other advertisements for Midsommar were selling a deeply disturbing horror movie. That’s definitely not what this movie is, though.

A group of friends traveling to a remote Swedish commune and uncovering dangerous cult behavior is a fine premise for a movie. The Ritual did good things with a similar idea, for example. The problem with this movie, though, was all in the execution. It failed to keep up any sort of prolonged intensity, had lots of storylines that spiraled off into dead ends, and generally lacked any sort of cohesion. 

In slow burn psychological horror, it’s important to maintain a building sense of discomfort in the audience. It’s fine to have character and story development interspersed, but the sense of danger and anxiety should both be maintained and increase as the movie goes along. The first Paranormal Activity did this exceedingly well. This movie did not.

One of the main issues I had with how this movie was presented was the comedy. After a very intense opening sequence, a fair amount of dark comedy was added to the film. The main source was the character Mark (played by Will Poulter). While I believe Poulter was probably giving a fine performance of a poorly written character, his presence in the film consistently torpedoed the dark, eerie, uncomfortable feeling of the movie. Many of his lines seem to have been post-prod punch up, and were not consistent with the vibe of the scenes to which they were added. (If you’re not familiar with the concept of punch up, check out this excellent explanation from Patton Oswalt: https://youtu.be/XK9decuuPC0)

While adding moments of dark comedy to horror is not inherently a bad idea, the problem here was that the audience was primed early in the movie to laugh. Later in the movie there were scenes that were clearly meant to be extremely serious that most of the audience in my theater laughed at. Because of that, the subtle things that should have been building tension were ineffective, so the horror feeling was lost, and the quiet scenes in between the violence were mostly boring instead of creepy. 

(STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS)

A specific example of this is the scene where the two older members of the community complete the ritual and jump off the cliff. This scene was pretty graphic, and the camera did not shy away from up close shots of the mangled bodies. When the old man didn’t die after jumping, there was a mostly silent scene where three other community members walk up and hit him in the head with an oversized hammer to finish him off. 

I believe that this scene was meant to be dark and shocking and to step up the tension of the story in a significant way. Most of the audience responded with laughter, though. This was because the movie had already spent time establishing itself as a dark comedy, so the audience had been trained to not take it too seriously. That scene was ambitious to start with. An old man’s collapsing head under a hammer strike is a difficult visual effect to pull off. With no music to set the mood and an established precedent of dark humor, the audience didn’t take the scene seriously and the intended effect was lost.

Midsommar also felt incredibly disjoined from a story perspective. I don’t mind that a lot of the details of the cult’s beliefs and rituals were left out. Keeping that part mysterious was fine from a horror perspective in my opinion. Trying to over-explain can be a quick way to kill momentum and challenge a viewer’s willful suspension of disbelief. In this movie, however, a lot of time was spent developing characters and ideas that ultimately played no real significance to the story, the tone, or the horror of the movie.

Why did the movie spend so much time on Josh’s investigation of the community when it never revealed anything important? Why was there the sub-plot of Christian trying to make up his mind about the subject of his thesis? How did Mark at all support the story? What was the point of the scene where Mark peed on the tree and some of the villagers got mad? What was the point of Josh and Christian fighting over their overlapping thesis topics? Why did Mark suddenly develop a constant vape habit only after he’d already been in the movie for like an hour?

To me, the core idea of the movie was telling the story of a young girl who went through a traumatic event and did not receive the emotional support she needed from her self-centered boyfriend. When they travel to Sweden, she finds a cult that provides the type of emotional support that she has always lacked and is susceptible to their recruitment because of that. Even though she is initially horrified by their rituals, she eventually gives in and embraces them over her boyfriend. 

If you were to pare away the elements of the story that did not support that central idea, then this movie could have been much shorter and more focused, which would have allowed the horror elements to work better. This movie did not work for me as a horror movie, and I felt very disappointed on that front.

The Ugly

I think the thing that bothered me most about this movie was that it didn’t feel like there was much progression from what was done in Hereditary. While I didn’t like Us as much as Get Out (or several other horror movies from the last few years), I did definitely see growth from Jordan Peele. Us did pretty much everything on a bigger scale - it included scenes from different time periods, had more characters, covered more locations, had more action, and told a significantly more complex story. He also did some really cool things from a filming perspective that felt like a step up from Get Out (the big overhead shots, the choreographed fights, the mirroring of scenes from above and below ground). Us felt like an ambitious step forward from Get Out and left me feeling excited to see what Peele does next. 

To me, Midsommar did not feel like a progression. It was in a different location and definitely took on more from a costuming and visual effects perspective, but it didn’t really feel like much of a diversion from many of the horror elements that were used in Hereditary. Both start with family tragedy that results in complicated feelings. Both are a bit of a slow burn after that and then take a sharp turn with an extremely gruesome scene (Charlie’s death, the two elderly cliff jumpers). As things culminate, people find desecrated bodies. Nude old people. A young, conflicted protagonist being crowned leader of a cult they don’t understand. I was hoping for a lot of new elements and creative ideas. Instead, I mostly saw similarity.

Final Thoughts

This was a technically sound movie with beautiful visuals and good acting. The camera work, costuming, and choreography were all well above average. Midsommar did not, however, execute well on a horror level. The story was disjointed, and the tone suffered as a consequence. This movie would benefit from more aggressive editing and would probably work better as a horror movie if it were shorter.

Will I see Ari Aster’s next movie? Yes. He’s a talented and creative new voice in the horror genre who isn’t just reviving old franchises. 

Will I be as excited for his next movie as a I was for Midsommar? No. I hope he proves me wrong.