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[Ari Aster] One thing I love about genre
film-making is that the genre kinda

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provides you with this like very sturdy
framework that you can kind of lay messier

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emotions onto and you can tell a very
personal story but it like provides you

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with a very kind of strict path that you
have to adhere to.

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And it also forces you to kind of find the
catharsis in that story.

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I just wanted to write a break-up movie,
and I saw a way of marrying the break-up

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movie that I had at the time with the
structure of a folk horror film.

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[Shannon] Rather then reviewing Midsommar
in full, I wanted to focus on one aspect

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of it: it's genre.

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I'm mostly going to be pulling from a
LA Times piece by Mark Olsen, who

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interviewed Aster and others who worked
on the film, and a folkhorrorrevival.com

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piece by author and artist Andy Paciorek
called:

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'From the Forests, Fields and Furrows'.

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Andy Paciorek's piece goes deep into what
the term 'Folk Horror' encompasses,

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though he never pretends to narrow the
term down into a distinct definition.

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As he says:

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But the unholy trilogy of Folk Horror
films are a good place to start, and,

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as he says:

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[Mark Gatiss] From the late 60s, a new
generation of British directors avoided

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the Gothic cliches by stepping even
further away from the modern world.

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Amongst these are a loose collection of
films which we might call Folk Horror,

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they shared a common obsession with the
British landscape, its folklore,

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and superstitions.

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Witchfinder General,
directed by Michael Reeves,

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took us back to the witch hunts of
17th century East Anglia.

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It may have cast horror legend
Vincent Price in the lead role,

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but this was new territory.
Dark, and nihilistic.

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The Wicker Man may have become the cult
film, and Witchfinder General

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may have grabbed most of the critical
plaudits, but there's another film

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which I think deserves
much wider appreciation.

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What makes it so special?

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Well, let's just say there aren't many
films set in the reign of William and Mary

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in which the Devil rebuilds his body by
harvesting the skin of children.

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The film is Blood on Satan's Claw,

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and its director Piers Haggard also drew
inspiration from the countryside

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of the home counties.

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What kind of a horror film
were you setting out to make?

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[Piers] I didn't want to do something
which was, urm, larky,

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and I wasn't really interested in Dracula,
I was interested in the dark things

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that people feel, and the dark things
that happen.

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And that was what I want to explore,
and I think the other thing that appealed

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to me, really, was the setting,
the rural setting.

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[Shannon] He says:

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[Mark] There's this sort of little moment
of Folk Horror, I suppose,

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which is absolutely distinct.

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Do you think that was something to do
with the times?

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[Piers] Uh, this is very interesting this.

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I think that I did-was trying to make
a Folk Horror film, in a way,

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because we were all a bit interested
in witchcraft,

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we were all a bit interested in free love,
the rules of the cinema were changing

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and nudity became possible and be
altogether possibly over-prevalent,

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because the lid
had slightly been taken off.

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[Shannon] The BFI piece on Folk Horror
describes the trilogy's films as:

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Paciorek recounts Adam Scovell's list
of Folk Horror elements:

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and argues for or against each.

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He says:

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[Piers] The nooks and crannies
of woodland, the edges of fields,

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the plowing, the labor, the sense
of the soil was something that I tried

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to bring into the picture.

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It was important to,
for the rest of the film,

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to have the camera often very low.

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[Children laughing]

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So we dug a whole flood of holes,
put the camera in, just to give you

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the feeling that we were somehow
in the earth and what it was might

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come out of the earth.

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[Shannon] ...says that Folk Horror films,
and 'backwoods' horror films, regardless

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of location often share the factor
of a principle character or characters

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finding themselves amongst people who do
not think or act the way they do,

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often with dire consequence.

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[Mark] Without a doubt, the best known
of this group of films is The Wicker Man.

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Set on an idyllic summer isle, it pits
the Pagan islanders against the upstanding

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Christian hero, with its horrific
conclusion played out in daylight.

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[Ari] It's fun in theory to make a film
in daylight, and then it's a nightmare

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in practice, you're chasing the sun
all day, which also means

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that you're chasing continuity.

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But I know that we were very excited about
making a film that was very beautiful

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and kind of inviting even as it gets
darker and darker, and whether you're

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making a film and, y'know, utter darkness
or, y'know, broad daylight,

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the goal is always
to make something beautiful.

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[Shannon] and that:

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The website in general says:

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Paciorek's piece is dense.

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He describes the origins
of the term 'Folk Horror',

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Folk Horror in other mediums,
and how it overlaps with other genres,

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especially sci-fi, and many examples from
different time periods all over the world.

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But rather then giving the full account as
he does, and as other websites try to do,

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I'm going to take the lead Paciorek
sets here, when he says:

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If someone asked me, in conversation,
to define folk horror,

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I'd just bring up The Wicker Man,
and describe it.

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Even having never seen it in full,
I have on hand

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what I learned from cultural osmosis,
and references.

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An uptight stranger gets stranded
in a more natural,

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seemingly idyllic setting, with members
of a religion he does not understand,

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and grows gradually more suspicious
and frightened of, until, spoilers,

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they destroy him as a part
of their rituals,

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and my first exposure to Folk Horror
probably came in those cultural references

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to films like The Wicker Man in...
Hot Fuzz!

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Which is a meta-comedy action film
that was heavily influenced,

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at least plot-wise, by Folk Horror.

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I think Folk Horror is neat,
and a subgenre that could either lend

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itself in pieces to another genre well,
or meld with other genres well.

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Apostle is more Folk Horror
then Hot Fuzz is,

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but it's still more action-oriented
and takes itself less seriously

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then something like Midsommar.

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But I did not enjoy or appreciate
the Folk Horror elements of Midsommar,

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I had so many problems with this movie,
but they crystallized when my friend

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sent me screenshots of that LA Times
interview after we saw the movie together.

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In that interview, Aster said:

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[Ari] Yeah I mean, I, uh, I wrote the film
during a breakup.

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Um, I wanted to write a breakup movie,
for the same reason that most people

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probably do, when they do,
and it's because I was going through one.

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[Shannon, reading on-screen text]

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Why would you take this genre, this 
stunning and terrifying and weird amalgam,

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where built-in you have a rich genre
history of beautiful settings

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and horrific violence, or a terrified
individual facing a harmonious collective,

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or the ability to harness
those primal fears of loss of self

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or loss of bodily autonomy,
or being trapped waiting to get killed

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in an unfamiliar and ancient place.

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Or like, maybe subverting these tropes
through a modern lens.

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The way The VVitch is a modern feminist
Folk Horror film,

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or like how modern audiences
don't hate hippies.

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Or maybe you could do something like
in Apostle where a lot of the villagers

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are hesitant and sympathetic and suffer
along with the outsider main character,

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or like Hot Fuzz which kind of parodies
the secular cop character.

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Everything there is so rich,
and has so much potential,

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and he's like, Aster's like:

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"Oh, it's incidentally a Folk Horror film.
I wanted to talk about my break-up,

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and for some reason, I took this genre
that's arguably about the collective

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vs. the individual, and fear of loss
of individuality, and the merits

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of a repressed secular society vs.
a creepy sex cult where people

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seem very happy but do weird scary stuff
all the time,

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and I made it about a very specific,
very personal event between two people.

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Because, to me, these genre elements
as a chose to apply them,

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are incidental, and predictable,
and boring."

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Hereditary is amazing,
and is deeply disturbing,

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and is imbued with Aster's own fears
of his loved ones dying, or changing,

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or betraying him,
or him accidentally harming them

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and the devastation and guilt
that would cause.

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[Ari] I mean, there's a saying that
"life is suffering", and I don't disagree,

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uh, and I guess with both of these films
I wanted to make something

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that takes suffering seriously.

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[Shannon] I related to it a lot,
having dealt with a lot of death,

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and it terrified me.

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[Ari] And, y'know, and then-otherwise,
y'know, I've..uh, my family and I have,

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like, y'know, suffered uh...misfortune,
y'know and, uh, to be cryptic, um, and uh,

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and so, y'know, I-I...you draw
from...from experience.

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[Shannon] You watch this family
who was very sympathetic slowly degrade

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and die because of forces
beyond their control.

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Midsommar is about a break-up,
Aster was not very interested

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in the ritualistic killing elements,
so...they're just sort of there.

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As far as I could tell,
there was no supernatural force

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keeping people on the island,
or killing them.

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[Erik Davis] Like, Scandinavian folklore
has got all kinds of creatures

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and monsters in it,
and was that sort of-stuff that helped,

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kind of played into it at all, or?

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[Ari] No, there-there's nothing overtly,
y'know, um, fantastical here.

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[Shannon] And at the beginning,
nobody is forced to be there,

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no one's taken there against their will,
and there a lot of opportunities

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to sneak away as huge red flags pop up
one after the other, but nobody does.

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Especially not the American characters,
this is for-something for a separate

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analysis, a separate video,
but specifically all of the Americans

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in this film are just very stupid
compared to the European characters,

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including the other outsiders, not just
the scary Swedish people.

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Most of the American characters are kind
of stupid or one-note,

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one is a crass gag character who has weird
comedy lines obviously ADR'd in

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that are a little bit distracting,
or they're unlikable.

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Some of the ritualistic kills,
in typical Aster fashion,

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are kind of sickening and upsetting
and haunting, especially towards the end,

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even if the film's narrative doesn't seem
to really care that they're happening,

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and some look kind of stupid
and are direct rip-offs of NBC's Hannibal,

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which did the killings better.

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Also there's a r*** scene that some
interviews

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and reviews describe as 'darkly funny'?

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[Jack Reynor] And I think that
it's a great device,

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and it challenges an audience and, y'know,
even seeing people's reactions to the film

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and seeing some people laughing through
this, y'know, crazy sex scene,

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and then other people going
"What are these people laughing at"?

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I think that's really interesting
and it's good film-making.

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[Shannon] I guess because a man
is the one who's r****,

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and that r*** is what pushes
the main character

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to get the character who is r**** killed?

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[Interviewer] 
And I don't have their handle,

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but they called this the 
"Anti-f*ckboy movie"?

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[Shannon] It feels like the film implies,
or could be very easily misread

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as implying, if it wasn't intentional,
that because the character is a man,

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and an asshole, that being heavily
drugged, and pursued for your seed,

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is somehow having consensual sex
and also cheating and makes him-

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it's like another thing in the list
of things that makes him a bad person

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and a bad boyfriend.

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There's lots of stuff he does in the movie
that is very realistic,

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classic bad boyfriend behavior,
and you understand why the main character

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is upset with him, and unhappy
with the relationship,

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but, yeah I don't-I really don't like
the way the rhetoric around this film

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has engaged with that scene,
I don't think the scene in the film

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is necessarily terrible, I don't know
if you're supposed to, like,

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relate to her when she decides to
get the villagers to kill him after that.

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It's pretty terrible, but I think a lot
of the response saw to it found that scene

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just sort of funny and weird
and it was like:

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"Oh he deserves it, oh watch out don't 
go see this movie with your girlfriend

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or she'll kill you, so like...ooooo"

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[Jack] Additionally, y'know, for me,
something that was kind of like

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a big, um, enticing factor in it
was-was this long drawn out,

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very humiliating and exposing sort of
sequence towards the end of the film,

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you know with the-with the fate that
Christian suffers.

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And that's something that, uh, I think
historically has been reserved for females

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in horror films,
but this was an opportunity to be a male

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and to put myself into that, um,
perspective, which was really interesting

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and difficult and made me feel vulnerable
in a way that I'm sure many actresses

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have felt over the years.

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[Piers] If I look at the r*** scene now,
um, I think it's probably too strong,

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and it's interesting that I wasn't
bothered at the time.

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I think you, um, will find most directors,
uh, if they get their teeth

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into a sequence,
which is going to be really powerful,

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they become completely seduced,
and I was seduced

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by the sheer dramatic power.

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[Shannon] Also during the r*** scene,
there were a bunch of weird naked women

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from the village?

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Some of them are old, the naked old people
in Hereditary are really scary

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and genuinely unnerving because
of the context,

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but out of context I don't find
naked old people scary,

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and it feels like something Aster
is leaning too heavily on.

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And the oracle character
is just straight-up offensive

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and also not scary.

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Look at this Fangoria cover.

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"Monsters - Aliens - Bizarre Creatures",

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over the face of a character
who is an in-bred disabled person.

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Deliberately performing incest
to make an oracle is disturbing, yes,

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but focusing on a deformed or disabled
face, as if it's inherently horrific

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and weird and upsetting
and the face of a monster, is just sh*tty.

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And some of the portrayals
of mental illness in this film,

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especially PTSD and anxiety, are accurate
and relatable,

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and others are just...baffling,
like the family death scene

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at the beginning at the hands
of the main character's bi-polar sister,

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that I honestly had trouble connecting
to the rest of the film tonally

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and aesthetically, apart from giving
the main character a reason to be upset

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and vulnerable the whole time.

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Midsommar does shine in scenes
where Aster leans more

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into the surreal horror elements.

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A nightmare sequence in the film
feels like a nightmare.

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The way one character's face
is highlighted, like, it's under-lit,

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even though there would be no realistic
light source where he is in a car,

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because it's a nightmare, like,
that was really creepy and it reminded

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me of nightmares that I've had.

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And the hallucinatory effects of drugs
characters take added a lot

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to the film's aesthetic and atmosphere,
without being unrealistic

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or clichéd or corny, and the film
is well shot and often creepy,

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and it does have a palpable sense
of dread with Aster is very good at,

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but it still feels long and meandering
and tiresome, and I found the way

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Aster talked about it in interviews
just kind of disheartening.

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David Edelstein's Midsommar review
in Vulture ends:

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[Ari] I...I wanted to-when I was writing
the film I-I wanted to write

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a break-up movie because I...needed
to write a break-up movie

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because I had just gone through
a break-up, um, and uh-and I saw a way

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of sort of passing it through 
this sub-genre, the Folk Horror genre,

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and kind of, y'know, marrying
those two things and-and, y'know, uh,

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finding a way to make this big operatic,
just, break-up movie, like dark comedy...

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I don't know, um, I don't know what it is,
um...

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[Shannon, reading on-screen text]

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[Shannon] I feel like this review maybe
projects emotions and intentions

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onto Aster a little too much.

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[Ari] I can tell ya, I put a lot of myself
into both of the characters,

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and I've been in both positions.

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I do call the film a horror movie,
that co-dependency and I-

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and that's sort of what I was thinking
about while I was writing it.

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But um, but I hoped that-that people
will be able to relate to-to both sides.

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[Shannon] But it's certainly telling
that he rejected the idea

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of a Swedish Folk Horror slasher until he
could thinly project his break-up onto it.

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Midsommar does explore some
of those Folk Horror elements,

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but it does in a disjointed way.

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Like Edelstein says, the main character
does find a kind of comfort in the cult,

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and a kind of place in the cult,
and scenes of group sobbing and screaming

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are-are very affecting, but the film
could've been improved a lot,

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I feel, if Aster had leaned more into
the Folk Horror elements

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outside of an aesthetic, and outside
of a skeleton on which to build

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his really weird, personal break-up movie.

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Gareth Evans, who directed Apostle,
sounded so excited and happy

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about the Folk Horror films
that he had seen, and incorporating those

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into his vision for Apostle.

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[Drew Taylor] Well what were some of your
inspirations, like, obviously Wicker Man,

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[Drew] I think.
[Gareth] Yeah, Wicker Man is definitely...

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[Drew] Um, what else
was in that stew?

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[Gareth] Um, I mean a lot of those British
Folk Horror films,

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so The Wicker Man, and Witchfinder General
as well, and then, um,

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more importantly probably
Ken Russel's The Devils,

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which I had not seen 'till 2016 when we
were just about to start working on this,

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and was a massive sort of inspiration,
because I was just blown away by that film

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I had never seen it before,
didn't know what to expect,

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and then it just came out of nowhere.

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[Shannon] And Aster seems almost, like,
embarrassed, or hesitant to embrace them,

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and not that he has to embrace them,
but why make a Folk Horror film

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if you don't want it to be
a Folk Horror film?

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As an aside, uh, shout-out
to Folk Horror Revival

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for being explicitly against fascism
on their website.

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That's cool.

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If you have any interest in Folk Horror,
you should check out that piece

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by Paciorek, and the BFI piece
I mentioned, links in the description.

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Also, I'm now the film correspondent
for the podcast Struggle Session,

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and we did an episode on Midsommar,
if you want to hear

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00:21:31,890 --> 00:21:35,271
more of my general opinion on the film,
link also in the description.

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If you enjoyed this video,
please consider supporting me

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00:21:37,939 --> 00:21:41,139
on Patreon for on-going donations,
and Ko-Fi for one time donations,

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and if you have any Folk Horror film
recommendations,

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please leave them in the comments,
because I'd like to branch out

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and maybe do a full video essay
on the genre at some point,

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especially, maybe like modern applications
vs. older ones.

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If you want to hear why I liked Hereditary
so much, check out my review on it,

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which is still my favorite review
I've ever written.

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Also, of course linked in the description.

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And thank you for watching.