In the Flesh: Midsommar

Much of horror deals at a fundamental level with the tension between catharsis and repression. Midsommar, Hereditary writer-director Ari Aster's sophomore horror flick, approaches this elemental subject matter without much in the way of framing, depicting a failing relationship between a needy, grief-stricken woman suffering from anxiety and an avoidant, emotionally stunted man incapable of direct communication. It transplants this relationship to the compound of a remote Swedish cult, the Hårga, where community members connect to and share the burden of extreme sensations and emotions of individuals by joining in with their expression. 

It's a fascinating conceit undercut by Aster's lukewarm script, inconsistent symbolism, and sterile film-making. Midsommar's compositions are largely workmanlike and lifeless, its antiseptic sets devoid of emotional context, its horror spectacles an unrelated string of mildly upsetting images. In its wide-eyed mushroom trips it locates an effective mirror for its ideas about emotional isolation while doing little to expand on its initial dialog about that same subject. The mass reaction scenes are easily its most powerful material -- certainly richer than the deformed and mentally disabled child trotted out a few times for no apparent reason beyond invoking disgust -- but without relationships or characters to anchor them they hang squirming ineffectually in an otherwise antiseptic environment.

Much of the film's appeal rests with actress Florence Pugh, whose anxious, unwanted Dani is a heated wire of misery and anguish from her first desperate scream of loss to her final tremulous smile. Her raw emotion is far and away the most genuinely unsettling thing in the movie, which is light on fear to a remarkable extent considering how scary Hereditary managed to stay even in its weakest sections, but it can't sustain the flimsy writing and indifferent characterization of the film's second and third acts. There is no monolithic image to unite the film's disparate symbolic explorations, no chaotic or jaw-dropping set piece to make sense of its meticulously orderly, almost Wes Anderson-esque camera and settings. 

Midsommar's self-conscious aping of films like The Wicker Man and Possession manages to miss both the irrevocably tangled web of infantilism and repression of the latter and the horrifying, monumental symbolism of the former. Its white-clad cultists have none of the earthy humanity of The Wicker Man's peasants just as its protagonists are framed in a far flatter, less ambiguous emotional context than Possession's warring lovers. Aster's film is a collage of indifferently interpreted inspirations, its few scattered moments of searing emotional immediacy lost in a cluttered tangle of homage. Pugh's wonderfully immersive turn and The Haxan Cloak's airy, unsettling soundtrack can't save it from its own square, sexless sensibilities and bland imagery.