Starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor

Directed by Ari Aster

A24 Films, out now

 

A group of friends travel to a mid-summer festival in Sweden and discover far too late that they’re not just witnessing quaint pageantry but the machinations of a pagan cult.

The last time I felt so frustrated by a mainstream horror film was just over a year ago when I watched Hereditary, which was also written and directed by Ari Aster. And my frustration comes from the fact that there are occasional flashes of brilliance in his work, which are then subverted by basic narrative failings.

At two-and-a-half hours (yes, you read that right) this self-indulgent movie is a good 45 minutes to an hour too long. I can handle slow burn, and in the first half there’s a creepy sense of dread as we see our characters slowly getting deeper and deeper into trouble – like watching a car crash in slow motion. But that only works if the payoff sates your anticipation, and I can honestly say that this movie played out exactly as I thought it would.

Part of the movie’s MO is that it’s set in high summer, and the vibrant rural setting and colourful buildings juxtapose with the darkness going on beneath. There’s no-one in the shadows because… there are no shadows, and maybe part of the dread is in the mundanity of what the folk are doing.

When things go bad, and it takes a while to get there, you prep yourself for a satisfying ending, but it’s on a par with Aster’s ‘nude old people in the treehouse’ from Hereditary. There are shocking moments, but I wasn’t shocked, and at no time was I scared. My underlying sense was ‘Oh, these poor people, what have they let themselves in for’, which was pretty much how I felt about the audience for the next screening.

Florence Pugh (The Falling) and Jack Reynor (Strange Angel) are fine as the leads, and the combination of visuals and score by The Haxan Cloak is at times quite remarkable, but there’s no originality or surprise.

Verdict: The Wicker Man has done this much better, and at a more economic running time. Folk horror is still a largely untapped vein at the cinema, and I really wanted to like this. And as gorgeous and glorious as it looks, it’s ultimately a hollow conceit. 4/10

Nick Joy