[Ari Aster] One thing I love about genre film-making is that the genre kinda
provides you with this like very sturdy framework that you can kind of lay messier
emotions onto and you can tell a very personal story but it like provides you
with a very kind of strict path that you have to adhere to.
And it also forces you to kind of find the catharsis in that story.
I just wanted to write a break-up movie, and I saw a way of marrying the break-up
movie that I had at the time with the structure of a folk horror film.
[Shannon] Rather then reviewing Midsommar in full, I wanted to focus on one aspect
of it: it's genre.
I'm mostly going to be pulling from a LA Times piece by Mark Olsen, who
interviewed Aster and others who worked on the film, and a folkhorrorrevival.com
piece by author and artist Andy Paciorek called:
'From the Forests, Fields and Furrows'.
Andy Paciorek's piece goes deep into what the term 'Folk Horror' encompasses,
though he never pretends to narrow the term down into a distinct definition.
As he says:
But the unholy trilogy of Folk Horror films are a good place to start, and,
as he says:
[Mark Gatiss] From the late 60s, a new generation of British directors avoided
the Gothic cliches by stepping even further away from the modern world.
Amongst these are a loose collection of films which we might call Folk Horror,
they shared a common obsession with the British landscape, its folklore,
and superstitions.
Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves,
took us back to the witch hunts of 17th century East Anglia.
It may have cast horror legend Vincent Price in the lead role,
but this was new territory. Dark, and nihilistic.
The Wicker Man may have become the cult film, and Witchfinder General
may have grabbed most of the critical plaudits, but there's another film
which I think deserves much wider appreciation.
What makes it so special?
Well, let's just say there aren't many films set in the reign of William and Mary
in which the Devil rebuilds his body by harvesting the skin of children.
The film is Blood on Satan's Claw,
and its director Piers Haggard also drew inspiration from the countryside
of the home counties.
What kind of a horror film were you setting out to make?
[Piers] I didn't want to do something which was, urm, larky,
and I wasn't really interested in Dracula, I was interested in the dark things
that people feel, and the dark things that happen.
And that was what I want to explore, and I think the other thing that appealed
to me, really, was the setting, the rural setting.
[Shannon] He says:
[Mark] There's this sort of little moment of Folk Horror, I suppose,
which is absolutely distinct.
Do you think that was something to do with the times?
[Piers] Uh, this is very interesting this.
I think that I did-was trying to make a Folk Horror film, in a way,
because we were all a bit interested in witchcraft,
we were all a bit interested in free love, the rules of the cinema were changing
and nudity became possible and be altogether possibly over-prevalent,
because the lid had slightly been taken off.
[Shannon] The BFI piece on Folk Horror describes the trilogy's films as:
Paciorek recounts Adam Scovell's list of Folk Horror elements:
and argues for or against each.
He says:
[Piers] The nooks and crannies of woodland, the edges of fields,
the plowing, the labor, the sense of the soil was something that I tried
to bring into the picture.
It was important to, for the rest of the film,
to have the camera often very low.
[Children laughing]
So we dug a whole flood of holes, put the camera in, just to give you
the feeling that we were somehow in the earth and what it was might
come out of the earth.
[Shannon] ...says that Folk Horror films, and 'backwoods' horror films, regardless
of location often share the factor of a principle character or characters
finding themselves amongst people who do not think or act the way they do,
often with dire consequence.
[Mark] Without a doubt, the best known of this group of films is The Wicker Man.
Set on an idyllic summer isle, it pits the Pagan islanders against the upstanding
Christian hero, with its horrific conclusion played out in daylight.
[Ari] It's fun in theory to make a film in daylight, and then it's a nightmare
in practice, you're chasing the sun all day, which also means
that you're chasing continuity.
But I know that we were very excited about making a film that was very beautiful
and kind of inviting even as it gets darker and darker, and whether you're
making a film and, y'know, utter darkness or, y'know, broad daylight,
the goal is always to make something beautiful.
[Shannon] and that:
The website in general says:
Paciorek's piece is dense.
He describes the origins of the term 'Folk Horror',
Folk Horror in other mediums, and how it overlaps with other genres,
especially sci-fi, and many examples from different time periods all over the world.
But rather then giving the full account as he does, and as other websites try to do,
I'm going to take the lead Paciorek sets here, when he says:
If someone asked me, in conversation, to define folk horror,
I'd just bring up The Wicker Man, and describe it.
Even having never seen it in full, I have on hand
what I learned from cultural osmosis, and references.
An uptight stranger gets stranded in a more natural,
seemingly idyllic setting, with members of a religion he does not understand,
and grows gradually more suspicious and frightened of, until, spoilers,
they destroy him as a part of their rituals,
and my first exposure to Folk Horror probably came in those cultural references
to films like The Wicker Man in... Hot Fuzz!
Which is a meta-comedy action film that was heavily influenced,
at least plot-wise, by Folk Horror.
I think Folk Horror is neat, and a subgenre that could either lend
itself in pieces to another genre well, or meld with other genres well.
Apostle is more Folk Horror then Hot Fuzz is,
but it's still more action-oriented and takes itself less seriously
then something like Midsommar.
But I did not enjoy or appreciate the Folk Horror elements of Midsommar,
I had so many problems with this movie, but they crystallized when my friend
sent me screenshots of that LA Times interview after we saw the movie together.
In that interview, Aster said:
[Ari] Yeah I mean, I, uh, I wrote the film during a breakup.
Um, I wanted to write a breakup movie, for the same reason that most people
probably do, when they do, and it's because I was going through one.
[Shannon, reading on-screen text]
Why would you take this genre, this stunning and terrifying and weird amalgam,
where built-in you have a rich genre history of beautiful settings
and horrific violence, or a terrified individual facing a harmonious collective,
or the ability to harness those primal fears of loss of self
or loss of bodily autonomy, or being trapped waiting to get killed
in an unfamiliar and ancient place.
Or like, maybe subverting these tropes through a modern lens.
The way The VVitch is a modern feminist Folk Horror film,
or like how modern audiences don't hate hippies.
Or maybe you could do something like in Apostle where a lot of the villagers
are hesitant and sympathetic and suffer along with the outsider main character,
or like Hot Fuzz which kind of parodies the secular cop character.
Everything there is so rich, and has so much potential,
and he's like, Aster's like:
"Oh, it's incidentally a Folk Horror film. I wanted to talk about my break-up,
and for some reason, I took this genre that's arguably about the collective
vs. the individual, and fear of loss of individuality, and the merits
of a repressed secular society vs. a creepy sex cult where people
seem very happy but do weird scary stuff all the time,
and I made it about a very specific, very personal event between two people.
Because, to me, these genre elements as a chose to apply them,
are incidental, and predictable, and boring."
Hereditary is amazing, and is deeply disturbing,
and is imbued with Aster's own fears of his loved ones dying, or changing,
or betraying him, or him accidentally harming them
and the devastation and guilt that would cause.
[Ari] I mean, there's a saying that "life is suffering", and I don't disagree,
uh, and I guess with both of these films I wanted to make something
that takes suffering seriously.
[Shannon] I related to it a lot, having dealt with a lot of death,
and it terrified me.
[Ari] And, y'know, and then-otherwise, y'know, I've..uh, my family and I have,
like, y'know, suffered uh...misfortune, y'know and, uh, to be cryptic, um, and uh,
and so, y'know, I-I...you draw from...from experience.
[Shannon] You watch this family who was very sympathetic slowly degrade
and die because of forces beyond their control.
Midsommar is about a break-up, Aster was not very interested
in the ritualistic killing elements, so...they're just sort of there.
As far as I could tell, there was no supernatural force
keeping people on the island, or killing them.
[Erik Davis] Like, Scandinavian folklore has got all kinds of creatures
and monsters in it, and was that sort of-stuff that helped,
kind of played into it at all, or?
[Ari] No, there-there's nothing overtly, y'know, um, fantastical here.
[Shannon] And at the beginning, nobody is forced to be there,
no one's taken there against their will, and there a lot of opportunities
to sneak away as huge red flags pop up one after the other, but nobody does.
Especially not the American characters, this is for-something for a separate
analysis, a separate video, but specifically all of the Americans
in this film are just very stupid compared to the European characters,
including the other outsiders, not just the scary Swedish people.
Most of the American characters are kind of stupid or one-note,
one is a crass gag character who has weird comedy lines obviously ADR'd in
that are a little bit distracting, or they're unlikable.
Some of the ritualistic kills, in typical Aster fashion,
are kind of sickening and upsetting and haunting, especially towards the end,
even if the film's narrative doesn't seem to really care that they're happening,
and some look kind of stupid and are direct rip-offs of NBC's Hannibal,
which did the killings better.
Also there's a r*** scene that some interviews
and reviews describe as 'darkly funny'?
[Jack Reynor] And I think that it's a great device,
and it challenges an audience and, y'know, even seeing people's reactions to the film
and seeing some people laughing through this, y'know, crazy sex scene,
and then other people going "What are these people laughing at"?
I think that's really interesting and it's good film-making.
[Shannon] I guess because a man is the one who's r****,
and that r*** is what pushes the main character
to get the character who is r**** killed?
[Interviewer] And I don't have their handle,
but they called this the "Anti-f*ckboy movie"?
[Shannon] It feels like the film implies, or could be very easily misread
as implying, if it wasn't intentional, that because the character is a man,
and an asshole, that being heavily drugged, and pursued for your seed,
is somehow having consensual sex and also cheating and makes him-
it's like another thing in the list of things that makes him a bad person
and a bad boyfriend.
There's lots of stuff he does in the movie that is very realistic,
classic bad boyfriend behavior, and you understand why the main character
is upset with him, and unhappy with the relationship,
but, yeah I don't-I really don't like the way the rhetoric around this film
has engaged with that scene, I don't think the scene in the film
is necessarily terrible, I don't know if you're supposed to, like,
relate to her when she decides to get the villagers to kill him after that.
It's pretty terrible, but I think a lot of the response saw to it found that scene
just sort of funny and weird and it was like:
"Oh he deserves it, oh watch out don't go see this movie with your girlfriend
or she'll kill you, so like...ooooo"
[Jack] Additionally, y'know, for me, something that was kind of like
a big, um, enticing factor in it was-was this long drawn out,
very humiliating and exposing sort of sequence towards the end of the film,
you know with the-with the fate that Christian suffers.
And that's something that, uh, I think historically has been reserved for females
in horror films, but this was an opportunity to be a male
and to put myself into that, um, perspective, which was really interesting
and difficult and made me feel vulnerable in a way that I'm sure many actresses
have felt over the years.
[Piers] If I look at the r*** scene now, um, I think it's probably too strong,
and it's interesting that I wasn't bothered at the time.
I think you, um, will find most directors, uh, if they get their teeth
into a sequence, which is going to be really powerful,
they become completely seduced, and I was seduced
by the sheer dramatic power.
[Shannon] Also during the r*** scene, there were a bunch of weird naked women
from the village?
Some of them are old, the naked old people in Hereditary are really scary
and genuinely unnerving because of the context,
but out of context I don't find naked old people scary,
and it feels like something Aster is leaning too heavily on.
And the oracle character is just straight-up offensive
and also not scary.
Look at this Fangoria cover.
"Monsters - Aliens - Bizarre Creatures",
over the face of a character who is an in-bred disabled person.
Deliberately performing incest to make an oracle is disturbing, yes,
but focusing on a deformed or disabled face, as if it's inherently horrific
and weird and upsetting and the face of a monster, is just sh*tty.
And some of the portrayals of mental illness in this film,
especially PTSD and anxiety, are accurate and relatable,
and others are just...baffling, like the family death scene
at the beginning at the hands of the main character's bi-polar sister,
that I honestly had trouble connecting to the rest of the film tonally
and aesthetically, apart from giving the main character a reason to be upset
and vulnerable the whole time.
Midsommar does shine in scenes where Aster leans more
into the surreal horror elements.
A nightmare sequence in the film feels like a nightmare.
The way one character's face is highlighted, like, it's under-lit,
even though there would be no realistic light source where he is in a car,
because it's a nightmare, like, that was really creepy and it reminded
me of nightmares that I've had.
And the hallucinatory effects of drugs characters take added a lot
to the film's aesthetic and atmosphere, without being unrealistic
or clichéd or corny, and the film is well shot and often creepy,
and it does have a palpable sense of dread with Aster is very good at,
but it still feels long and meandering and tiresome, and I found the way
Aster talked about it in interviews just kind of disheartening.
David Edelstein's Midsommar review in Vulture ends:
[Ari] I...I wanted to-when I was writing the film I-I wanted to write
a break-up movie because I...needed to write a break-up movie
because I had just gone through a break-up, um, and uh-and I saw a way
of sort of passing it through this sub-genre, the Folk Horror genre,
and kind of, y'know, marrying those two things and-and, y'know, uh,
finding a way to make this big operatic, just, break-up movie, like dark comedy...
I don't know, um, I don't know what it is, um...
[Shannon, reading on-screen text]
[Shannon] I feel like this review maybe projects emotions and intentions
onto Aster a little too much.
[Ari] I can tell ya, I put a lot of myself into both of the characters,
and I've been in both positions.
I do call the film a horror movie, that co-dependency and I-
and that's sort of what I was thinking about while I was writing it.
But um, but I hoped that-that people will be able to relate to-to both sides.
[Shannon] But it's certainly telling that he rejected the idea
of a Swedish Folk Horror slasher until he could thinly project his break-up onto it.
Midsommar does explore some of those Folk Horror elements,
but it does in a disjointed way.
Like Edelstein says, the main character does find a kind of comfort in the cult,
and a kind of place in the cult, and scenes of group sobbing and screaming
are-are very affecting, but the film could've been improved a lot,
I feel, if Aster had leaned more into the Folk Horror elements
outside of an aesthetic, and outside of a skeleton on which to build
his really weird, personal break-up movie.
Gareth Evans, who directed Apostle, sounded so excited and happy
about the Folk Horror films that he had seen, and incorporating those
into his vision for Apostle.
[Drew Taylor] Well what were some of your inspirations, like, obviously Wicker Man,
[Drew] I think. [Gareth] Yeah, Wicker Man is definitely...
[Drew] Um, what else was in that stew?
[Gareth] Um, I mean a lot of those British Folk Horror films,
so The Wicker Man, and Witchfinder General as well, and then, um,
more importantly probably Ken Russel's The Devils,
which I had not seen 'till 2016 when we were just about to start working on this,
and was a massive sort of inspiration, because I was just blown away by that film
I had never seen it before, didn't know what to expect,
and then it just came out of nowhere.
[Shannon] And Aster seems almost, like, embarrassed, or hesitant to embrace them,
and not that he has to embrace them, but why make a Folk Horror film
if you don't want it to be a Folk Horror film?
As an aside, uh, shout-out to Folk Horror Revival
for being explicitly against fascism on their website.
That's cool.
If you have any interest in Folk Horror, you should check out that piece
by Paciorek, and the BFI piece I mentioned, links in the description.
Also, I'm now the film correspondent for the podcast Struggle Session,
and we did an episode on Midsommar, if you want to hear
more of my general opinion on the film, link also in the description.
If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting me
on Patreon for on-going donations, and Ko-Fi for one time donations,
and if you have any Folk Horror film recommendations,
please leave them in the comments, because I'd like to branch out
and maybe do a full video essay on the genre at some point,
especially, maybe like modern applications vs. older ones.
If you want to hear why I liked Hereditary so much, check out my review on it,
which is still my favorite review I've ever written.
Also, of course linked in the description.
And thank you for watching.