Ari Aster Delivers Another Slow-Burn Horror Winner With Midsommar

Much like how Jordan Peele made quite a different beast with Us compared to his directorial debut Get Out, director Ari Aster has similarly taken great pains to ensure that his second directorial effort, Midsommar, is different from his initial directorial debut, last years Hereditary. Whereas that 2018 Toni Collette horror film was a grim contemplation of the cycle of abuse that oozed dread in every frame, Midsommar is a more loosey-goosey laidback horror comedy set in Sweden that utilizes the broad plot outline and character types of The Wizard of Oz. Aster's penchant for not just resting on his laurels is already admirable and it only helps matters that, when just taken as its own horror movie, Midsommar is a chilling and unique feature.

Hereditary Is Heavily Impressive And Also Heavily Disturbing

A constant refrain from director Brad Bird is the simple truth that animation is not a genre, but rather, a medium of storytelling. Horror is similar to animated tales in this regard in that movies belonging to this format of storytelling are largely seen as being highly similar to one another whereas the truth is many different types of stories can be told in horror-based filmmaking. You can do an action movie in a horror story, you can do a comedy, you can do a psychological thriller, you can do all sorts of different types of filmmaking while engaging in the process of scaring people. The versatility of horror films as an art form gets reinforced once again in Hereditary, the feature film directorial debut of Ari Aster and a motion picture that functions more as an examination of a families psychological turmoil in response to loss than what might be considered a conventional horror movie.