You don’t have to be especially eagle-eyed to notice there are a LOT of murals in Ari Aster’s new folk horror movie Midsommar (read my review). The film, about a group of anthropology students who travel to Sweden to study a creepy cult, features dense production design, full of detailed pictures, posters and tapestries and don’t just hint at what’s about to happen… they practically tell you outright in storyboard format.
And that’s just the way Ari Aster wanted it.
In a new interview with Bloody-Disgusting, Aster explained that the film’s pervasive and meticulous visual foreshadowing wasn’t just an effort to immerse the audience in his fictional cult society, but also a fun metatextual commentary on the audience’s expectations of the film.
[SPOILERS AHEAD.]
“First of all I’m working in the folk horror subgenre,” Aster said. “Anybody who knows the genre at all, if you’ve even HEARD of The Wicker Man or Blood on Satan’s Claw, any of these films, you know exactly where we’re going. You know what we’re doing. These Americans are going to be sacrificed.”
“So for me, that’s the least interesting thing about this movie. It’s the thing that’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. So I’m going to treat it that way. From the very beginning, the movie is agreeing to go there. If we didn’t go there it would be probably dissatisfying,” Aster explained.
“So we’re going there. We’re agreeing to go there, and we’re treating it as a given,” Aster said. “So that attitude finds its way into the production design, where there are images strewn through the film that are prophetic in one way or another, and that are – I hope – encouraging a more active audience engagement.”
“That said, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but for me, the film is not about where we’re going. That’s already been written. It’s about what it feels like when we get there, and what the movie actually reveals itself to be once we get there,” Aster added.
“So for the men in the movie, for the American visitors, and for the British visitors, this is a folk horror movie. For our main character, this is a fairy tale.”
Of course, the problem with having that much foreshadowing is that it can make the characters look stupid for not noticing all the obvious red flags, and getting the hell out of danger early in the story. Ari Aster thought of that and he decided to embrace it.
“That’s something where I tried to have fun with that,” Aster revealed. “For me, half the fun was in having these guys be anthropology PhD’s who, the worse it gets, the more exciting it is because they’re going to make this their thesis. And so like, the more grotesque and the more spectacular things become, the more promising this trip proves to be.”
Can you pick up on all the hints in Midsommar? The film is in theaters now!
