From the trailers, it seems that ‘Midsommar’ is a delightful horror movie surrounding a cult but for director Ari Aster, it is a bit more personal. It looks as if Aster reached into his personal life to craft the film as he penned it after a bad breakup which he had just gone through.
The idea quickly adds up when you move past the cult to focus on the main character, Dani, played by Florence Pugh. She is dealing with her current relationship with Jack Reynor’s Christian falling apart as the two are heading out on a trip with two of their closest friends.
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According to the director:
“I was sort of going through a breakup at the time and piecing through the ruins of a failed relationship. I’d wanted to write [a breakup movie] before, but I could never find an angle that felt interesting and didn’t feel like a mopey, kitchen sink drama. But then I was approached by a Swedish production company that read “Hereditary,” and they said that they wanted me to write a folk horror film set in Sweden. We found that the framework of the folk horror movie was kind of perfect for a story about a relationship ending.”
Ari feels that broken relationships are “fodder for good drama,” which is exactly what he injected into the soul of ‘Hereditary’ and appears to be what we’ll see here as well. He goes on to explain exactly how these relationship problems will be front and center for the audience as well:
“I imagine anyone with the vaguest understanding of the folk horror genre, I’m sure they’re not trusting the community very much. I put a lot of work into not making them mustache-twirling villains who are, like, winking at the audience. It’s a breakup movie, but we are aligned with Dani. That makes Christian the antagonist. The relationship is falling apart. We’re with one party that kind of puts us on the defensive as far as the other party is concerned. It’s important to me that both of them feel relatable and people might be able to see themselves in both the characters.”
Are you looking forward to checking out ‘Midsommar’? Do you feel that a breakup sequence is a perfect way to delve into this folk horror film? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Dani and Christian are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that render the pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing.
From writer/director Ari Aster (Hereditary) and starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, and Will Poulter. MIDSOMMAR — In Theaters July 3, 2019.
Source: Variety
