How Ari Aster created trepidation with intricate details and eerie interpretations of tradition.
Horror movies almost always leave an impact on your psyche, whether it’s a jumpscare you didn’t see coming, a scene so gruesome you squint your eyes, or a slasher coming after a character you’ve grown to empathize with. I would argue though, that the best of horror movies produce fear with a shock you can see coming. The dread of inevitable indication is director Ari Aster’s arguable specialty, and how his thrillers leave an impact that lasts longer than a nightmare.
Midsommar, Aster’s most recent film is one that encompasses this energy to a T. Focusing on a woman who is grieving, and giving us the story of her inevitable downfall into insanity through the plot of a Swedish summer solstice festival. When Dani ends up accompanying her boyfriend Christian and his friends Mark, Josh and exchange student Pelle to Pelle’s respective home in the community of the Harga, they are appalled with the extreme ceremonies that take place. As a 3rd party audience, we not only see how this affects Dani personally, but how difficult it is for this cast to convince themselves that these customs are respectively cultural at all.
In the beginning of Midsommar, we are set up to process a scene about Dani’s distinct traumatic experience, one that isn’t conventional but also not too insane to comprehend. She receives an email from her sister that seems scary and threatening, but for her own sanity her friend and boyfriend offer a reminder that it is not out of the ordinary to receive messages of this tone, as her sister had been mentally ill for years, and was safe under the care of her parents. Just as Dani begins to become more angry than scared, we cut to a scene of paramedics swarming a house. 3 people who we can only assume are Dani’s loved ones are breathing directly from tubes secured to their mouths and under their bedroom doors, the other ends’ attached to the exhaust of both running cars in the garage. This scene is one that would resonate with seemingly nobody, but how could we watch a murder-suicide this gruesome and not sympathise with the woman who is left alone in it all?
After losing your sister and parents, how could you prevent a newfound attraction to anything that makes you feel like a part of something, or even have the energy to notice how susceptible to manipulation you might have become? In a way, Ari Aster introduces us to the perfect cult victim with over two hours left of film, and we are given little time to mourn her losses, quickly thrown into what will happen of her already rocky relationship, almost emotionless friendships and the balance of life when you aren’t willing to control it anymore. Leading directly with tragedy is arguably the smartest route Aster could have taken, because while minimizing your character(s) to predisposition of more misery, you also create an unsettling feeling of trepidation among your audience.
Dani’s boyfriend, Christian, was on the verge of ending their relationship when these deaths took place; Tired of caring for her, and convinced by his friends she is weighing him down. In the aftermath of her trauma he is harsh, he comforts his girlfriend not because of commitment but because of obligation. And now invites her on a vacation to another country with his friends because he has to, he is all she has left. As a supporting character, we see him through Dani’s eyes. He is useless, and cares little about her concerns or tribulations, but still she grasps, what does she have without him?
The element of an emotionally monotonous relationship in the midst of unbelievable events creates the uncomfortable vibe that Dani’s feelings and precautions really aren’t taken seriously or into account at all. When she is scared and disturbed after the first ritual her friends endure, Christian invalidates her feelings, claiming that she needs to be more open minded about their traditions and that everything is fine. Their relationship is dull, and builds dramatic irony through the manipulation Dani is faced with. She is made to believe that she’s reacting disproportionately due to her recent agony, and talks herself down from her distress to lessen the burden she is now convinced her emotions impose. As an audience, we understand the severity of the slow building events taking place even though Dani has convinced herself that they are situationally normal. We also can sympathize with her toxic relationship, and have an impulse to help and comfort her, but we can’t.
Once we are given this conditional introduction to our characters and understand the minacious energy of the celebration they are meant to be observing, we start to see how susceptible Dani has become to the indoctrination of the community. When we take a closer look at the practices of the Harga commune, there is a sinister energy behind their execution, and a realization that these rituals aren’t spiritual in nature at all, but demonstrate cult characteristics. These practices of mind-altering stimulation, isolation and blind conformity, even unreasonable sexual eploitation all point to a deeper movemtnt. Pelle, the mutual friend who brought our group of outsiders to his locality, has really only brought them for a specific reason, to introduce them to his “family”. This sense of family is what ultimately grasps Dani and pulls her into the twisted world of Midsommar’s premise. Again, we realize irony through the pull of intrigue Dani is defenseless against, and our understanding of how botched the situation truly is.
The violence Dani and her friends are subjected to is repulsive. Heads smashed in, seemigly willing suicides, skin suits, human flays, just hit the surface of the barbarity that becomes exposed. The difference between these scenes and the violence we are subject to in films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, and It Follows lies in the reactions of the characters involved. The outlandish violence occurs right in front of our eyes, and the entire ensemble is made to accept their surroundings under the persuasion and reassurance that this is all part of the lives of these people. There is no running, no real fear of being the next victim, because according to our plot, all of this is normal. It is without warning, but also without surprise.
Therefore, by creating a victim who is broken down and dilapidated, the use of false belonging and full acceptance by a surrounding of people who seem to feel her pain, regardless of under what circumstance, creates a devastating demonstration for the audience. We are so off-put by the death and brutalization that is consistent throughout the seemingly everlasting days of solstice, that Danis’ increasing serenity deprivation of reasonable judgment during these demonstrations makes us almost angry. She is the classic token blonde in every slasher, except for the fact that she really isn’t at all. She is smart, but blinded by pain, so the question arises once again, can we really be upset that she has become comfortable with the feeling of inclusion and love, regardless of it’s consequence?
Another uncomfortably breathtaking aspect of the relative traditions put forth is the at first seemingly unimportant detail that from the very beginning of their time in the Netherlands, the entire group is under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms. Each ceremony is prefaced with a laced tea, which is distributed in a Jim Jones fashion. This element contributes not only to the parallel of Harga to cult patterns, but also to our understanding of each situation realistically.
What makes the artistic component of psychedelics so important throughout the film lies in the minimalistic effects that are put forth in each scene. At one point, Danis hand begins to grow grass as she looks down to her skin on the ground, and each dinner scene includes decorative centerpieces equipped with personified breathing. Although these details are small, once noticed they are hard to unsee. So how else is the story affected by the influence of drugs? Perhaps the smartest choice made by Aster is that we will really never know. Are the things we see as inhumane really as bad as we see them? As gruesome or horribly detailed? All we really know is that everyone who drinks this tea seems content with what takes place, and even if not so much at first, Dani experiences this nonchalant side effect as well.
At the end of the film, we realize that Dani and Christian are the only ones of the American group who have not been absorbed and made sacrifices for the sacred festival. As Dani goes to find her boyfriend, we are met with a scene of sexual ritual, involvolving an intoxicated Christian and a young Harga woman. Dani runs from the room where she finds them, and drops to the ground. This is where so many of our concepts collide, as Dani is grieving her toxic and broken relationship, she feels even more alone than before, but the women of the commune crowd around her, and share her screams. She is comforted, she is somehow understood.
We now get to see a yellow house across the field, and as the interior is panned, we realize it is full of the mutilated bodies of both familiar and unfamiliar characters, but there is one main spot left. Situationally Dani is met with a decision, one that ultimately leaves her boyfriend to burn alive in this special seat for the final oblation of the holiday. And our last shot is a slow zoom towards her subsequent reaction, from devastation to some form of benumbed gratification.
As Aster’s final moments of script are filmed, he doesn’t hesitate to give us as much detail and open interpretation as has been shown for the rest of the feature. We are left with our main character to be engrossed in the practice and following of what she was so afraid to be near in the first place, and only our own predictions for what will become of her life, completely altered from what it was before any tragedy had occurred. This eerie feeling is what evidently leaves us thinking about the movie and its details for so long after it’s over, because although she is left with nothing, Dani also appears to be free.
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