Midsommar: NZIFF Review

Midsommar: NZIFF Review

Director Ari Aster's next project after Hereditary is a descent into a psychological freefall, rather than an out-and-out freakout fest.

The ever wonderful Florence Pugh stars as Dani and Jack Reynor stars as Christian, her feckless boyfriend. When something happens to Dani (an event best left unspoiled, thanks to the pre-titles play out of dread), the pair try to get back on track.

Invited by Christian to tag along to a trip to a commune in Sweden where he and a handful of mates are heading for research, Dani finds her uncertainty in their relationship escalating.

It's exacerbated by the pagan rituals and lifestyle of those at the Swedish midsummer festival in Hälsingland .... but there's more going on than any of them realise.

If Hereditary was psychological terror, then Midsommar is the break-up album.

A sprawling, slow-moving descent that's in no rush to unveil its hand, the film's commitment to unsettling can be interpreted in many ways.

Whether it's a take on Americans crashing European ways of life and disrupting cultural matters, or simply a feeling of off-kilter unusual behaviours, Midsommar's desire to unnerve is there from the start - and carefully telegraphed.

Artfully executed by Aster, and beautifully choreographed by DP Pawel Pogorzelski, and blessed with a turn of frailty and subtlety by Pugh as she negotiates extreme trauma, Midsommar is more about the horrors of human behaviours than the appearance of the supernatural and what it can entail.

There are lashings of humour throughout, but as the crescendo of the creepy builds, there's more a sense of uncertainty rippling through this Wicker Man / League of Gentlemen hybrid folk horror and bucolic beastliness.

The horror comes in the consequences, and the reality of what's next - and while the conclusion may infuriate some and feel derivative to others, what Aster's done is essentially cycle back to the beginning's themes.

Midsommar is less a dream, but even less a nightmare - it's a waking breathing feeling of insomnia, and it's stiflingly good because of it.