Midsommar Nightmare

“I did tell you — I said I might do that.”

“Might is different than actually doing it.”

“I should just go.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to … I just wanted to know that’s all — I want you to go with your friends and be happy.”

“It’s fine, no worries.”

In Midsommar, director Ari Aster’s horror follow-up to his 2018 Hereditary, the couple Dani and Christian seem to have had that conversation a lot. Recovering from the tragic death of her family at the hands of her bipolar sister, Dani gets invited to a preplanned trip to Sweden with her boyfriend and his fellow Ph.D. anthropology candidates, Josh, Pelle, and Mark. The plan was to party in Stockholm and study summer solstice rituals of the native Swedes. Pelle, a Swede and member of a commune right out of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, initially guides them in the traditions of the cult — until things turn sideways.

The philosophy of the cult navigates ageless, yet delimited traditions — this particular community’s tradition only occurs once every 90 years or so — of nature as foils for today’s fast-paced life. It’s a trope that the human experience is like the seasons, spring denoting birth and growth, summer representing vitality and passion, fall connoting harvest and toil, and winter encapsulating death with the hope of rebirth. For the gathering tradition portrayed in the film, these seasons have specific ages and rituals associated with transitioning.

As a microcosm of society, the cult is a small community with the unavailability of choice. That, coupled with a lambs-to-slaughter way in which the Swedish men lead foreigners into the community, seems to suggest that when people get liberated from the expectations of morally bound civil agreement, violent methods of compensation for order and control are inevitable.

Midsommar uses character reactions to, and behavior toward, looming death as one of the primary vehicles to deliver this argument. Throughout the ages, humans have grappled with the wickedness of death, that hangs over our heads in accident or sickness, and especially at the end of natural life. For the cult community in the film, it’s more virtuous to accept fate, as if to conquer and dictate to nature rather than accept risks, pain, and the withering fragility of old age.

What’s more instructive, however, and undoubtedly the centerpiece of the film, is the unhealthy relationship between Dani and Christian, that makes a boldface comment on modern dating and relationships. Christian gaslights, manipulates, cheats, and fails to listen to Dani’s concerns. But, more this is more than a movie about a bad relationship that gets worse when exposed to extremes. It aligns itself with the mood and instinct of a woman struggling to tell reality from fiction.

In our age, riddled with lies and deception, it’s no wonder that gaslighting has become so commonplace and a buzzword. Fake news is as much a barometer for truth as it is a weapon for deception. So when Christian sees oddities before his eyes, yet chooses to overlook them and dismiss Dani’s rational interpretation of unnerving events, he embodies a political parallel to the modern individual attracted to a seemingly regressive group of people.

Perhaps it’s a testament to the fact that people, when pushed to the brink, give in to their behavior in a state of nature riddled with envy, wrath, and lust.

Midsommar is an examination of this question: Who are we when all the guardrails of civility are stripped away? Audiences will find their answer in the full light of the summer solstice, as characters find themselves forced to reconcile dueling limitations of instinct against judgment, nature against collective humanity. This grueling film, lasting nearly two and a half hours, will force viewers into the collective, drawing them into the emotional beats and rhythms of a disturbing environment they will nevertheless find engrossing.

Tyler Grant is a lawyer in New York, published poet, and Washington Examiner contributor.