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A Midsommar’s Nightmare Dream

(AP)

Ari Aster must have grown up with some freaky treehouses.

We got a glimpse of one in last year’s Hereditary, one of the most subtly frightening films of 2019. In that treehouse A-frame, demons were worshipped, humans sacrificed, and a lot of fire hazards went ignored.

Aster returns us to rustic living in Midsommar, a movie that help establishes him as one of the most nuanced horror directors working today. Again, Aster places human actors in what appears to be oversized dollhouses, underscoring a favorite theme of his: We are ushered through nightmares by forces greater than us.

Indeed, Midsommar is a waking nightmare. And I mean that in the best possible way.

For over two hours you will be transported to a beautiful village in the middle of nowhere in a foreign land where the sun never seems to set and everyone is wearing ornate flower crowns and enchantingly embroidered frocks. The details of why you’re there will seem fuzzy and dubious. Someone’s thesis, maybe? But you go along with it even when things start getting weird.

You will eat strange food and drink strange drinks. You will take drugs you don’t want and be subjected to ceremonies and rituals and a language you don’t understand. You will witness some of the most disturbing things you’ve ever seen. You will not be too concerned when people start disappearing. You will lose the ability to rely on your one anchor to the real world. And even though you will barely comprehend what’s going on around you, you won’t be able to leave or look away.Image result for midsommar

Writer and director Aster is to thank, or blame, for this extraordinary experience that’s equal parts befuddling and enthralling. It’s only Aster’s second feature film following the terrifying family drama “Hereditary” and it’s clear that the talent and deranged verve he teased there was no fluke.

But enter with caution: Midsommar is not as straightforward a horror as Hereditary was. It’s hazier and harder to grasp, despite taking place almost entirely in blunt daylight. This is an experiment in escalating uneasiness absent any release or catharsis.

As in Hereditary, a family tragedy sets an ominous tone, but this time it hits you right at the beginning before you’ve gotten to know anyone. We meet Dani (Florence Pugh) while she is frantically trying to contact her family to make sure her sister is OK, but no one is responding. It’s the worst possible outcome.

Unfortunately for her the only person she has for comfort is a boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), who has already broken up with her in his mind but hasn’t gotten around to communicating that to her just yet. Too bad for Christian and his unsympathetic friends (Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren) Dani’s family crisis makes the otherwise imminent split all but impossible. So, Dani, a haunted shell of a human, becomes a permanent fixture at Christian’s side, even going so far as to accompany the four guys on their bro trip to the Swedish commune where one of them was raised for a midsummer festival that happens every 90 years.Image result for midsommar

Aster literally turns the camera upside down as the five travel to this blindingly bright area. It helps you arrive a little queasy and disoriented (although not quite as much as the characters, who’ve just ingested some psychedelic mushrooms).

Still, the drug-induced visions are nothing compared to what they will experience as clear-minded tourists in this village, which at first seems like a quirky novelty. But as with so many chic cults, there is unfathomably grotesque violence and brutality lurking underneath the Instagram-worthy aesthetics. Aster lures you in with relative normalcy, including often very funny dialogue and situational absurdity as the Americans try to fit in in this world. But before you know it, it’s too late to turn back and you’re stuck patiently watching this floral paradise curdle into a pagan inferno.

Midsommar is audacious filmmaking and totally transfixing despite its lengthy run time. It’s heartening to know that big, original cinematic swings like this have not gone extinct.

And yet, as with Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated sophomore feature Us, Midsommar might not actually add up to anything especially satisfying, or completely coherent, in the end. Aster also curiously reuses some of the striking images he used so effectively in Hereditary, such as pagan iconography and starkly naked and de-sexualized bodies. And somehow these characters never evoke empathy on par with the Hereditary ensemble.Image result for jordan peele us

But the journey is fascinating enough that it’s still worth the trip. Aster’s films, like David Lynch’s, are about entering menacing dreamscapes, where the only reality is dread. You don’t watch Aster’s movies. You submerge in them. And by the point of Midsoomar‘s mid-immersion, you’ll  just be grateful that you’re finally allowed to wake up.

The Death of the Hollywood Twist

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Two months months ago, while working a story on M. Night Shyamalan’s career, I called up every internet clip and video analysis I could find about the director, who is known for his twist endings (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs).

In the course of reporting the story, a prelude to Shyamalan’s latest film, Glass, I came upon a number of videos breaking down the new film — including the twist ending — which hadn’t even been released yet.

That didn’t stop sneak preview viewers from spilling more than the twist ending. The videos spelled out every twist. Every unexpected turn was revealed, dissected and analyzed. There were a half-dozen surprises in the film, at least. Some video critics warned they were going to spill the movie’s  secrets. Some did not.

By the time I walked into the movie, I knew every turn the flick was going to make, from character revelations to battle outcomes.

I enjoyed the movie, but couldn’t help but wonder whether spoilers had cast a shadow of bias over my viewing. It certainly ensured a surprise-free couple of hours. Tension was a non-factor. Still, the spoilers had alerted me to Shyamalan’s break from comic book tradition with Glass — which perhaps biased me to like the movie.

Regardless of this particular movie, spoilers have become such a reality in film that, to enjoy one, you pretty much have to avoid computers, cell phones and TV sets till you’ve seen the film.

What would Hitchcock think about the development, I wondered. This has to be crazy-making for suspense directors like Shyamalan, John Carpenter, West Craven, and on. Just this weekend, Jordan Peele’s movie Us raked in $70 million on its opening weekend, breaking multiple records for a suspense film. So spoilers didn’t appear to hurt the bottom line.

Still, on a lark, I decided to do similar research Saturday on the movie, which ends with a twist on which the film squarely rests.

So I turned on YouTube. The first video recommended was entitled “The ending of Us explained.” The video was done by a group called Looper, a wildly popular movie website and online channel. The movie opened at midnight Thursday. The video was posted about 4 p.m. ET on Friday. Within its first four hours, it had more than 15,000 views.

The video aired without warning viewers of spoilers ahead, and the six-minute video broke down every key scene in the flick, as well as the identity of the mysterious villain. A cursory look uncovered a half dozen other similar videos. Then I went to Wikipedia and looked up the movie. There, too, was a page-long synopsis of the movie, including the surprise ending. All within 36 hours of its opening.

What’s happening here? Remember when you had to hear someone tell you of  The Sixth Sense! Or The Crying Game? Go all the way back to Citizen Kane or Psycho; Some of Hollywood’s most iconic moments stem from rugs being pulled beneath viewers’ feet. Imagine your reaction if a friend told you in the mid-80’s, “You gotta see The Empire Strikes Back! It’s got great effects! And I can’t believe Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father!” (oh, spoiler alert). You’d likely punch your friend in the face.

But spoilers have become so pervasive in movies some YouTubers are recording their reactions literally seconds after stepping from the theaters. And perhaps that’s inevitable. Maybe word-of-mouth is like the phone booth and mailbox; short for this world. Our laptops have become our water coolers, Facebook our hair salons, Twitter our barber shops.

The overall effect on movies is hard to gauge, though some signs are ominous. A recent study by VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands found that spoilers may not ruin an experience entirely, but can reduce suspense and decrease overall enjoyment of a film.

In a study of 412 college students, scientists found that movies that had been spoiled were rated as less moving, less thought provoking, and less successful at drawing the viewer into a narrative world and providing an immersive experience. The effects of story spoilers were “consistently negative,” Benjamin Johnson, an assistant professor and study coordinator, said in a statement.

“Our study is the first to show that people’s widespread beliefs about spoilers being harmful are actually well-founded and not a myth,” Johnson said. “Instead, we surprisingly found that for all the outcomes, spoilers were detrimental.”

The study did not recommend solutions, nor even suggest one was possible in the immediacy of an internet era. But Hollywood may have no choice but to act: Despite annual box office records, most of the increase is due to inflation. Actual movie attendance is down about 10% over the last 20 years, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. If that trend continue, studios may be on the receiving end of a disastrous spoiler.