One Wicker Man to go please, no bees, no wicker, extra bear.

I'll make no secret of quite how terrible I thought Hereditary was, despite it gaining rave reviews more or less across the board; it clearly demonstrates why I'm not a professional cinema critic or anything even approaching that. I mean, sure if you're into tedious family dramas intermittently sprinkled with obvious and predictable horror tropes leading to an unintentionally but genuinely hilarious finale (I did a belly laugh in the cinema and probably got a whole bunch of very shitty looks) then Hereditary is probably right up your proverbial alley. Midsommar will probably float your Viking longship as well in that case.

People are genuinely touting Ari Aster as the future of horror which to me is a bit odd considering Hereditary was supposed to be a family drama and Midsommar is roughly as scary, tense or horrific as your average digestive biscuit. Obvious spoilers ahead here but frankly if you're going to remake The Wicker Man (without Nic Cage) then at least have the humility to say that's what you're up to.

The Wicker Man is liberally touted as a classic; I watched it at University in around '98 I guess just after it was reclassified by the BBFC after years of notoriety as being too utterly terrifying to show to the poor unsuspecting public. Obviously, we're all Godless heathens now, so you can probably catch it on ITV on a Saturday at tea time. I can't say I was particularly inspired; how scary can a bunch of Arran sweater-wearing hippy-types really be? Not so much it turns out.

Midsommar swaps a determined Scottish Police Sergeant for a group of terminally dislikeable anthropology students lured out to Sweden to witness a once-in-a-lifetime Scandinavian Pagan ritual and the inevitable unfolds over the space of the next two hours until the Wicker Man, wait sorry... Big Yellow Teepee goes up in smoke and everyone sort of shuffles off back to their reasonably priced, build-it-yourself furniture. I presume, I mean there's no mid credit scene or anything.

The real problem with this movie is that every single person in it is a complete dick and there's exactly nobody to root for. The main protagonists are a couple so toxic you're willing them to break up or just murder each other within about 5 minutes. He's a passive aggressive tool who doesn't really want to be there but can't be arsed to dump her and although she does go through some fairly major trauma early on, losing your entire family isn't an excuse for being a complete sap for the preceding four years or whatever. I get that the guy can't really ditch her directly after that sort of thing, but still. His mates are all basically cretins and by the time they're all conscripted by the creepy foreign exchange Swedish dude to go study his family's weird little village, you're crossing your fingers for a mid air collision on the flight over, or at least some sort of Ebola outbreak.

Inside Aster's head, horror must a very distinct meaning; bore your audience to tears then drop in some admittedly visceral gore at the drop of a hat (or in this case the drop of a couple of old folks off a cliff) et voilà! Thing is, it's all really, really predictable. His foreshadowing is not the most subtle in the game and the result is that there's literally no tension. One by one the idiots disappear (predominantly off screen) but the group dynamic is so poorly portrayed, you hardly notice and barely care. Aster also seems to be unable to direct actors to cry in any sort of convincing fashion. In Hereditary it was the son, blubbing like a child for his Mommy in such a weird over the top way that he'd have been laughed off stage at some village hall in the sticks during your local Am Dram production of some god awful shite written by Tim who works in accounts by day and thinks he's Shakespeare by night. In Midsommar, the girl (I can't even remember the characters' names and I'm loathe to even check Imdb) sobs in this weird sort of wail that no self-respecting human would utter unless they were being paid a ton of cash to... Oh, wait. It's like he's never heard a human being actually cry in real life and is just sort of winging it. Baffling.

I do need to talk about the ending, because, well you'll see. If you haven't seen this (or Hereditary actually) and are planning to this next bit is going to really ruin both entire movies to about the same degree as sitting through them so be ye forewarned... 

Ari Aster loves his uninentionally funny endings. In Hereditary it's a headless corpse floating into a treehouse like a weird, grisly helium balloon. Guffaw. In Midsommar it's a guy paralysed by magic powder burning alive, sewn into the hollowed out carcass of a bear. There is literally no way you can look at his stupefied little face poking out of a bear's mouth and not grin. It's the dumbest looking thing ever. On paper, I'm sure it sounded petrifying but on film it just looks silly, like a reasonably lifelike but ultimately stupid Halloween costume. Imagine putting that much effort building up to a grand finale only for it to look like a College Football mascot who's temporarily lifted his mask up to take a quick drink and been caught by a fan with a camera. You be more gutted than the bear. 

So there it is, a reboot of The Wicker Man in all but name, sadly minus Nic Cage punching out hippies and yelling about bees. I can't wait for Aster's next critically acclaimed masterpiece which I can only assume will be a reboot of The Fog except not called that and The Fog is a bear.