2019 horror, dir. Ari Aster, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor:
IMDb /
allmovie. After the tragic
death of her family, Dani goes along with her boyfriend and other
anthropology students to visit a commune in Sweden…
And the first question I had, given the way this film was
promoted, was: is this the smart horror that I've been asking for all
these years? Are we going to see well-developed characters who act
like real people when confronted with the horrifying situation?
No, it isn't. No, we really aren't.
The Swedish group who originated this Swedish-American co-production
apparently had in mind a straightforward slasher film set in the
commune in rural Sweden. All the character stuff was, we are told by
all sides, added by the eventual director Ari Aster, who'd previously
made Hereditary (2018) and would go on to Beau Is Afraid (2023).
But right up front, during the initial sequence as Dani finds out
about the death of her family (unlike the events themselves, which are
shot very well to make it clear what's going on without needing any
speech), I at least perceive a certain lingering joy in showing the
pretty woman suffering that will be a repeated theme through the film.
Yes, I get it, for purposes of the story you need to show that she is
devastated by these events. But you don't have to linger on it, you
don't have to invite the audience to be complicit in your enjoyment as
the camera leers at the tears on her face.
Then we get on to… well. In synopses, and even in some reviews, this
sequence of Dani, her boyfriend, and later his fellow-student friends
talking about what's happened to her, and the trip and adding her to
it, is presented as good wholesome stuff. Christian is a supportive
boyfriend, they say, and it's only later that things become weird.
Maybe I saw a different cut? Because the Christian I saw is a
controlling arsehole who plays on Dani's insecurities to keep her
bobbing along in his wake rather than going off and finding a partner
who might actually like her rather than just needing something to
fill the "pretty girlfriend" slot on his inventory. (Is this Ari Aster
making an accidental feminist statement? I'm sure it's not a
deliberate one.)
(This was Florence Pugh's breakthrough year, with this film, Fighting
With My Family and the Greta Gerwig Little Women all starring her.
So it's not surprising that she's the best actor here.)
Still, off we go to Sweden, and… it's The Wicker Man, isn't it?
Except they haven't got the point of The Wicker Man, the thing
that raises it above generic these-locals-are-nasty horror, which is
that Sergeant Howie has plenty of chances to get out of his role as
the sacrifice… but he turns them all down (granted, not fully
understanding what this will lead to). Nobody here has a chance to get
out of anything.
But first a scene that really defined the film for me. One of the
students is an expert in Scandinavian runestones. I am not such an
expert, but I do know that all surviving runestones are documented;
there's a catalogue. So when he suddenly sees a stone in the commune,
he should be saying either "aha, I wanted to get a look at this one
close up" or "oh wow, here's one that isn't in the catalogue". He says
neither of these things; he just explains to his friends what a
runestone is.
There's a developmentally disabled guy used purely for "ooh he looks
weird" value.
Aster keeps trying to do the same trick Spielberg used in Jurassic
Park: we're looking at the cast, their eyes go wide as they see
Something Amazing (over our shoulder, in effect), and then the
audience is primed to be impressed when we cut to the Something. This
worked reasonably well when the Something was state-of-the-art CGI
dinosaurs. It's not so effective here where it's just another
building, or just more people doing something very slightly unusual.
Of course the non-white people die first.
There's the beginning of a story about Dani's mental health after the
events at the start of the film, but nobody ever treats her
differently, or believes her any more or less than if she hadn't been
traumatised.
And you know, I genuinely believe that Aster's intended message here
is "huh, women. They catch you screwing some local chick and the next
thing you know they're burning you alive. How unreasonable can you
get?"
By the way, the May Queen is a spring concept, not a summer one.
Bah. Yeuch. This left a bad taste in my mouth.
Midsummer is of course a genuine festival time in Sweden.
Ättestupa on the other hand was written as a parody or moral lesson,
like Atlantis (in this case "look, these people are so amazingly happy
and healthy that they have to choose to end their lives"), and then
later folklorists took it seriously. And, you know, I've seen a lot of
people falling to their deaths in films, but I've never seen a film
before in which the director felt that if I didn't see them hitting
the ground I might not be properly impressed.
I talk about this film further on Ribbon of
Memes.