Midsommar (2019)

directed by Ari Aster

Emma Murray

I watched Midsommar mid-winter—in the middle of using a dating app for the first time at 27 years old.

Like Midsommar’s protagonist Dani (Florence Pugh), I was out of my depth. I was in a new land of virtual lust-love stuffs; Dani was in the thick of your regular ‘traveled-to-Sweden-with-a-shitty-boyfriend (Jack Reynor)-who-pity-invited-her-after-her-sister-killed-their-parents-and-herself-oh-and-by-the-way-there-are-pagan-cultists-and-other-trippy-scary-shit-unraveling’ plot. The anxiety!

Director Ari Aster does anxiety well and has been heralded as a horror wunderkind after his 2018 directorial debut Hereditary, a film whose critic response boils down to SCARIER THAN THE EXORCIST, and I do not fuck with The Exorcist. But I did foolishly fuck with Hereditary and paid a handsome price: nightmares, night sweats, terror, the whole deal.

While online dating, I also foolishly fucked with emotionally unavailable men—the kind of men who would subtly announce on the first date that they broke up with someone a few months ago but it was no big deal in between sips of beer—an admittedly No! You fool! Don’t run down into the basement! Run outside! moment I did not register from the ‘How to Survive the Horror Film That is Online Dating’ rulebook.

But Ari Aster & Co.’s brand of horror is less ‘a visible evil is coming for you’ and more ‘a debilitating weighted blanket called anxiety has come to slowly crush your body until you can’t move and can’t stop watching what is unfolding.’ The cinematography is beautiful and the deaths artful. Even when watching one Pagan cultist throw themselves off a cliff to sacrifice their body to the pile of jagged rocks below, the resulting gorno shots, and knowing that a second cultist stepped up for the same fate, I could not move, look away, or breathe.

I could not look away from the online dating app either. I used an app that allowed me to initiate contact first—a strangely powerful feeling. In those two months, I went on a decent amount of first dates, a handful of second dates; and even fewer third dates. My dates were reduced to profile identifiers: artist, engineer, graduate student, mechanic, actuary, radio programmer, lawyer.

Each date was an opportunity to conjure up futures. In one future, I stuck it out with the ‘woke’ Bernie Bro who talked at me and legitimately slurped his beer from where it sat on tabletop in front of him, and ended up spending a lifetime of silent dinners resenting him, his slurping, and wishing he’d choke on his meal/aspirate his drink so I could get a word in. In another, the career serious numbers guy, who wanted ‘wife material’ and calculated many imagined futures beyond what I had, would’ve never let me touch the checkbook. In another, the second shift worker led to nights alone and waiting up, playing tug-of-war with each other’s orbit. In another, the one who liked to play video games or simply watch his friends play video games online before bed gave rise to visions of the window to our marital bed, its constant blue flickering and my sighs floating out onto the dark lawn.

Dani, as a result of either psychotropics from the cultists or the trauma of losing her sister and parents in a murder-suicide or a shitty boyfriend that has no understanding of helping to share the burden of emotional labor, gets sucked-drugged-manipulated, whatever you want to call it, into the cultists’ future—a path that eventually crescendos into Dani choosing her shitty boyfriend as a sacrifice for the cultists’ ceremonial pyre.

The movie closes on Dani watching the pyre go up in flames with her drugged but still alive boyfriend inside, along with a handful of other living and dead sacrifices. To say the moment is overwhelming is underwhelming.

Initially, as the living sacrifices immolate and cry out from the pyre structure, Dani has a visceral response: coughing, gagging, and gasping in disgust, terror, everything. Meanwhile, behind her, the cultists serve as a Greek chorus translating Dani’s range of emotions. (Bobby Krlic’s original score of this moment and the whole film is gorgeous to boot.) The cultists vacillate between twitching in rage and dancing in ecstasy. And as the pyre caves in on itself, this image dissolves to reveal a tight shot of Dani’s stunned face—a face that slowly turns into a smile.

Partway through my first online dating experience, I couldn’t empathize more with Dani. The moment was cathartic. I sang the film’s praises to family and friends. My sister live-texted her reactions, which boiled down to—40 minutes in: I hate this. 30 minutes later:  I fucking hate this. 30 minutes later: I still hate this. 20 minutes later: *inserts a Randy Jackson ‘Yeah, it’s a no from me dawg’ gif*

My best friends and I got into a debate over the film’s ending that left one friend torn between being satisfied about [Dani] not having to deal with her shitty boyfriend anymore and feeling bummed for her since cults are notorious for preying on people with weak relationships and no family. The other friend responded to my that ending was sooooo satisfactory/cathartic comment with being evil isn’t exactly good catharsis, which devolved into a discussion on whether someone who’s been drugged by a cult continuously and is going through recent trauma can be considered in control or to have agency in relation to actions. It was a mess.

The being evil isn’t exactly good catharsis comment also had me rethinking my response to the film and online dating. Should I have enjoyed that ending so much? Maybe I’m the date that isn’t ‘woke’ or political enough, the date that doesn’t talk enough, the date that drinks beer too brutishly, the date that offered to pay (a man’s job!), the date that wasn’t down to hangout late on weeknights, the date that isn’t into trying new things (re: dumb video games).

Maybe I’m the unbearable one, the shitty boyfriend, but I smiled too.

Emma Murray is a writer and educator living in Iowa—not to be confused with the Irish novelist Emma Murray, who writes about motherhood. That's not kidless (Iowa) Emma Murray's bag.