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Midsommar: The End of the Affair
Some people have their summer song, the one that sets the mood for the season, the one they return to again and again. That last year’s summer movie was, for me, Ari Aster’s Hereditary, says an awful lot about how last summer was working out for me. Compared to real life, there was something reassuring about this tale of a family consumed by destiny, the absence of free will and self-decapitation. I saw it again and again. It was always horrific, even when I knew what was coming, and there was so much to admire and discover in the scenes that seemed as meticulously constructed as the main character’s dioramas.
This summer my life is feeling a bit less desperate, but the film scene has been feeling particularly uninspired, so I was thrilled by the arrival of Midsommar, the spell-check challenging new horror film from Aster. Set primarily at a brightly lit festival in a remote Swedish sect, it promises to turn on our own established expectations for both Aster and horror in general. Where Hereditary centered on family, Midsummar’s characters are a group of single friends. Where the previous film reveled in darkness, here we are in a setting where the sun doesn’t go down. There’s initial a degree of fascination that, having deliberately set things up at polar opposites from his previous work, Aster (like his characters) can’t help but be lured back to what’s most familiar.
