SiftPop

By Devan Meyer

When it came time for me to sit down to write about Ari Aster’s sophomore feature Midsommar, I was at a loss for words; how can you possibly write a conventional review for what is so obviously not a conventional film? Something so impossibly jagged and multifaceted, one which deliberately subverts every trope and begs the viewer to pay attention to every little detail.

My experience(s) with this film was unusual to say the least. I sat down in the theatre and was enraptured along with the rest of the audience, until suddenly, at the 2-hour mark, a lightning strike caused a power failure of the entire building. My viewing was cut short mid-scene, with 20 minutes and credits remaining. Some attendees thought this abrupt cut to black was the end of the movie—it would have been fitting considering everything else Aster had put us through the past 2 hours.

Coming out of this unfinished viewing, I felt like I was in a trance—or more like I had been pulled out of one. As if I were under hypnosis and someone said the trigger word to bring you back to reality. Yet I didn’t want to return to reality. I had unfinished business in Aster-world.

I reserved a ticket to see it again the next morning, just 16 hours after my first viewing. This time, I was treated to the full Midsommarexperience, and it was transcendent. 

Every cinephile lives to follow at least one auteur throughout their career, from inception to culmination. Ari Aster just might be mine. If Hereditary was Aster’s Reservoir Dogs—to compare him to another modern auteur—Midsommar is his Pulp Fiction. Expansive, innovative, and touching on numerous themes, it can’t be categorized in just one box.

If you’re expecting a fright fest of jump scares and slasher kills, you may be disenchanted to learn that Midsommar is more of a relationship drama and rumination on grief, wrapped in a celebration of ancient European traditions and commentary on colonialism, privilege, and feminism, among other things.

But if you’re looking to be disturbed, you’ve come to the right place—only be sure to expect the unexpected, as in the world of Ari Aster, the unsettling comes from the most surprisingly familiar places. 

Midsommar is almost an Anti-Horror movie—a film whose self-reflexive themes, subversive scares, and protracted scenes occupied with picturesque scenery seem antithetical to the tropes of the genre. In many scenes, Aster uses his camera to toy with how the audience expects things to play out. This makes the viewer an active participant in the film, as if Aster is more our guide through the events of the film than the narrator telling us what’s happening.

Some scenes even played out differently on my second viewing compared to my first; on the initial watch, with tension and anxiety, and on the second, with awe and wonder. To be able to experience segments of a film in an entirely new light only adds dimension to what is on screen and shows the depth of what Aster has accomplished.

I am also truly in awe of the fact that Aster was able to achieve something so vast, complex, and challenging in such a short period. This film, having only been greenlit in May of last year, is essentially the inverse of his debut Hereditary; a sprawling, pastoral, borderline agoraphobic masterwork.

Aster displays near-Wes-Anderson levels of idiosyncratic craftmanship as a director, and his talent for empathy and world building as a writer is like some amalgamation of Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick. His mastery of tension is almost unmatched against his contemporaries, and the method by which he can hold an audience’s attention, even when consistently subverting expectations and confronting them with extremely shocking imagery, is genuine sorcery. 

You may walk out of the theatre hating Midsommar. It is safe to say I believe this is a groundbreaking achievement, one which will be dissected, studied, quoted, and imitated in the future. 

However, as divisive as this film may be—and let me be clear, this is a love it or hate it film, entirely by design—I highly recommend everyone go see it, if only to discover which category they fall under. Films which spark this kind of discussion need to be seen.

Hereditary was Ari Aster’s arrival on the scene. Midsommar is his confirmation to the world he is the next big thing. I sincerely cannot wait to see what he does next.

Grade: A