Interesting if overlong riff on The Wicker Man

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2019)

Coming off of his intense HERIDITARY, Ari Aster's follow-up certainly doesn't let up in the dysfunctional family drama department from the get go. A young woman, Dani (Florence Pugh), is stunned by tragedy as brutal and lacerating as anything in Aster's first film. But, even with that backdrop, the central story here is more about Dani's flagging four year old relationship with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor). Still reeling, Dani discovers that her beau is going to go on a European road trip with two of his college buddies, Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter). They have been invited by a Swedish student Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) to attend a summer festival in his homeland. Dani, kinda sorta invites herself.
Once they arrive in Sweden, Pelle informs that this isn't just any annual fest - it's a very special once every 90 years bash. Of course, anybody who's seen the movie's obvious (and acknowledged) model, 1973's THE WICKER MAN, knows -- bad things are going to happen (more on that later).
To Aster's credit, he doesn't just follow the typical horror movie playbook. He takes his time detailing the structure of the cult. The Scandinavian Midnight Sun setting gives it an eerie glow (the digital photography is both a plus and a minus here, with the gleaming whites sometimes veering into a milky artificial look). The story unfolds slowly and it takes a while for it to get to the heart of the matter. But, once it does, there is a certain intensity that builds, even if it never rises about a low simmer.
On the downside, the characters aren't very interesting, save for Dani. Outside of Pugh (who, since her breakthrough in LADY MACBETH has continued to prove to be an actress to watch), the performances are mostly flat (and that's being kind to a couple of them). If you don't care about Christian or his friends, Dani's personal trajectory is trimmed. While showing admirable restraint, Aster's pacing eventually becomes more than a bit protracted. The viewer knows where it is headed, even if the characters are too dense to see it. Those intricate ritual details are interesting at first, but, soon one wonders if Aster and his editors fell so in love with them that they lost the thread along the way, more concerned with fetishistic attention to minutiae than telling a compelling story (Aster has recently said that he is going to add another 30 minutes or more to the already bloated 147 minute run time!). At a certain point, the torpid pacing, simpleminded characters and weak development veers it into unintentional humor (yes, there are some deliberate sardonic bits). The climactic scene (while predictable) has a certain grand guinol quality that partly redeems the bloat.
P.S. On THE WICKER MAN comparisons. Aster has copped to the fact that his producers wanted a "bloodier" version of that tale. Now, as pointed out in the piece, Aster adapts Director Robin Hardy and writer Anthony Shaffer's (SLEUTH, FRENZY) piece with his own details and emphasis. Still, it's more than an homage. The outlines of the two movies are easily traced upon each other. Naming the male lead "Christian" is more than a bit obvious (I guess naming him "Edward Woodward" would have been too much?). Aster goes into far more details, but, all the elements are there in the original work (and, it's no small matter to point out that in a horror movie, what is NOT shown, can be more important - and effective - than what is). And, the ending? Really? Aster couldn't have come up with ANYTHING different?