Midsommar and folk horror

[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.