Ari Aster is a genius... but he keeps making the same movie

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2020)

Midsommar is an incredible film. What an idea to make a horror film where 90% of it takes place in perpetual daylight. The fact that this perpetual daylight is so creepy completely blows away presupposed ideas of what horror can be, and what a horror film can do.
I loved the story and most of its characters. There was so much life-like nuance to how the characters' interacted with other, even if some of them could be quite one dimensional. Specifically, Christian is a character that one can really imagine meeting somewhere, but not particularly liking. It is this ability to create unlikeable characters that partially explains Aster's effectiveness at making horror.
All of the films I have seen from him: Hereditary, Midsommar, and to a degree The Trouble With The Johnsons, follow a similar narrative pattern. All of these narratives deal with horrifying death(s), unbearable grief, dramatic irony, and transformation. This is a pretty good recipe, but the fact that it exists really takes away the impact for me. For instance, there is a scene somewhat early in the film that I am sure would be absolutely horrifying to people that haven't just seen Hereditary the day before, but which I kind of shrugged off. Maybe it's just because I'm a huge horror fan, but, in that moment, I had to really search myself for empathy for the characters who witnessed this act, who I imagine had to have been horrified in a way few people ever are. Yeah, it was sudden, it was gruesome, but there was something so plain about it that made me completely unaffected.
That's another problem with this movie. There's so much ridiculousness in the film that it seems like Aster is really trying to up the ante for its own sake. Unflinching macabre and insanity is part of what made Hereditary such an effective film, but after a certain point it's just a distraction.
However, the film does up the ante in a way that is meaningful. Even though it is so long, it doesn't drag. It's rare for a horror film to have so many characters but still be so effective. It's unheard of for a movie to take place mostly in the sunlight. It is unheard of to make that creepy in and of itself. If I hadn't of just seen Hereditary, I might have given this a 10.