Midsommar

The defining choice in Ari Aster’s 2019 film is light. Almost all of it happens outdoors in daylight with no shadows, so the horror reflex of watching the dark corners has nothing to do; the threat is already in plain view. An impatient viewer reads that as slowness, when what is built is the absence of anywhere to hide. Aster describes the film as a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film. The ritual plot is a vehicle for the relationship, so the genre payoffs arrive on the couple’s schedule, not horror’s. Swedish producers brought him a slasher idea and he turned it down; he found a way in only once he wrote a couple on the edge of separating. Shooting in Hungary instead of Sweden was mostly a budget decision, but Sweden also caps a shooting day at eight hours. The drug sequences were pulled back on purpose; Aster says some shots went through sixty versions before they settled on the least intrusive option, to keep the performances readable. A24 asked him to trim his first cut for wide release; that longer director’s cut was released separately. A good fit if waiting on a decision about a relationship is the real tension. Less so if you want the threat concealed, emerging out of darkness.