Midsommar

For the similarly titled 2003 film, see Midsommer.

Midsommar
Teaser poster
Directed by	Ari Aster
Written by	Ari Aster
Produced by	Lars Knudsen Patrik Andersson
Starring	Florence Pugh Jack Reynor William Jackson Harper Vilhelm Blomgren Will Poulter
Cinematography	Pawel Pogorzelski
Edited by	Lucian Johnston
Music by	The Haxan Cloak
Distributed by	A24
Release date	July 3, 2019 (2019-07-03) (United States)
Running time	147 minutes
Countries	United States Sweden
Languages	English Swedish

Midsommar is a 2019 American-Swedish horror film written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, and Will Poulter. It follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that only occurs every ninety years, only to find themselves directly in the hands of a pagan cult.

A co-production between the United States and Sweden, the film was initially pitched as a straightforward slasher film set amongst Swedish cultists. Aster devised a screenplay using elements of this concept but made a deteriorating relationship the central conflict after he had experienced a difficult breakup. The film was shot on location in Budapest, Hungary in the summer and fall of 2018.

Midsommar was released in the United States on July 3, 2019.

Plot

Anxiety-afflicted college student Dani Ardor suffers from severe emotional trauma after her bipolar sister commits a murder-suicide with their parents. As a result, Dani’s already precarious relationship with her boyfriend Christian Hughes, an anthropology graduate student, is adversely impacted. Already emotionally distant, Christian has been looking for a way out of the relationship for a while, but decides to stay with Dani while she recovers from her tragedy.

The following summer, Christian attends a party with Dani, where she learns that he had been invited by his Swedish friend, Pelle, to attend a midsommar celebration at Pelle's ancestral commune, the Hårga, in northern Sweden. Pelle explains that the days-long celebration only occurs once every ninety years. Attending with Christian are fellow graduate students Josh and Mark; Josh plans to observe the commune's customs and practices as part of his thesis. After Dani finds out about the trip two weeks before the flight—which Christian had concealed from her—Christian awkwardly invites her to come along, to the dismay of Josh and Mark.

The group arrive at the commune where they take psilocybin together at the request of the villagers, resulting in Dani having a bad trip. She runs into the woods after seeing visions of her sister before passing out in the forest. The next day at the commune Pelle gives Dani a portrait drawing of her as a birthday gift. Shortly after, Christian is reminded by Pelle that he has forgotten it is Dani's birthday. Later, they meet Simon and Connie, an English couple also invited to attend by Pelle's brother, Ingemar. Tensions rise after Pelle brings the six of them to witness an ättestupa ritual in which two of the commune elders commit senicide by leaping from a stone edifice. When the male elder fails to die as a result of the fall, several members crush his skull with a mallet. Throughout this, the commune members mimic the elders' pain. Though Siv, a female elder, insists the ritual is perfectly normal according to Hårga’s cultural beliefs regarding death, the four students find the ritual disturbing, especially Dani, who wishes to leave immediately. However, they decide to stay, both at the behest of Pelle and because of scholarly work Josh and Christian are doing. Simon and Connie, however, are set on leaving.

Josh attempts to glean more information from an elder on the commune's ancient runic practices, which are based on paintings made by a deformed member who was birthed of incest. After Mark unwittingly urinates on the community's ancestral tree, he is lured away by a female member. That night, Josh sneaks into a temple to photograph their sacred runic text, and is rendered unconscious by a partially nude man wearing Mark's skinned face.

The following morning, Connie and Simon prepare to leave, where they are allegedly escorted to a train station in separate vehicles. Meanwhile, Dani and Christian engage in various celebratory activities alongside Pelle. While Dani participates in a maypole dancing competition, Christian is drugged and groomed to participate in a sex ritual in which he impregnates commune member Maja while female elders watch the act. Dani wins the maypole competition and is crowned the May Queen, an esteemed title in the Hårga. After witnessing Christian participating in the sex ritual, a horrified Dani has a panic attack, but several of the Hårga women show their sympathy by wailing with her. Shortly after, a disoriented Christian discovers Josh's leg partially buried and Simon's body, ritually dismembered as a still-living blood eagle. Christian is found and paralyzed by an elder with the aid of an unknown drug.

As the May Queen, Dani has to choose between two living individuals, one outsider, Christian, and a lottery-selected villager, to be sacrificed as the conclusion of the ritual along with four outsiders (the college students) and four of the Hårga (the two elders from the ättestupa and two living volunteers). Bitter and heartbroken, Dani chooses to sacrifice Christian. This leads to Christian being stuffed into a dissected bear and placed in a designated temple, alongside the still-living Ingemar and a second villager, along with the corpses of Josh, Mark, Simon, Connie, and the two elders. The temple is burned in an effort to purge the cult’s evil. As the building begins to collapse, the cult members begin to writhe and celebrate in a wild ecstasy. When one of the living sacrifices begins to scream, the residents mimic their pain, unleashing a cacophony of wailing. Initially, Dani sobs in horror, but gradually begins to smile.

Cast

• Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor
• Jack Reynor as Christian Hughes
• William Jackson Harper as Josh
• Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle
• Will Poulter as Mark
• Ellora Torchia as Connie
• Archie Madekwe as Simon
• Liv Mjönes as Ulla
• Anna Åström as Karin
• Isabelle Grill as Maja
• Rebecka Johnston as Ulrika
• Hampus Hallberg as Ingemar

Production

In May 2018, it was announced Ari Aster would write and direct the film, with Lars Knudsen serving as producer. B-Reel Films, a Swedish company, was announced as the producer of the film, with A24 distributing. According to Aster, he had been approached by A24 executives to helm a slasher film set in Sweden, an idea which he initially rejected as he felt he "had no way into the story." Aster ultimately devised a story in which the two central characters are experiencing relationship tensions verging on a breakup, and wrote the surrounding screenplay around this theme. He described the result as "a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film".

In July 2018, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, Vilhem Blomgren, William Jackson Harper, Ellora Torchia, and Archie Madekwe joined the cast. Principal photography began on July 30, 2018, in Budapest, Hungary, and wrapped in October 2018.

Release

Midsommar had a pre-screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in New York City, on June 18, 2019. The film was released in the United States on July 3, 2019.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Midsommar is projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,707 theaters over its first five days. It made $1.1 million from Thursday night previews, which Deadline Hollywood called a "smashing start".

Critical response

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on 123 reviews, with an average rating of 7.23/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".

John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "The horror equivalent of a destination wedding" and "more unsettling than frightening, [but] still a trip worth taking." Writing for Variety, Andrew Barker noted that it is "neither the masterpiece nor the disaster that the film's most vocal viewers are bound to claim. Rather, it’s an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution". David Edelstein of Vulture praised Pugh's performance as "amazingly vivid" and noted that Aster "paces Midsommar more like an opera (Wagner, not Puccini) than a scare picture," but concluded that the film "doesn’t jell because its impulses are so bifurcated. It's a parable of a woman’s religious awakening—that's also a woman's fantasy of revenge against a man who didn't meet her emotional needs—that's also a male director's masochistic fantasy of emasculation at the hands of a matriarchal cult."

Eric Kohn of IndieWire summarized the film as a "perverse breakup movie," adding that "Aster doesn’t always sink the biggest surprises, but he excels at twisting the knife. After a deflowering that makes Ken Russell’s The Devils look tame, Aster finds his way to a startling reality check." Time Out's Joshua Rothkopf awarded the film a 5/5 star-rating, writing: "A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer."

For The A.V. Club, A. A. Dowd emphasized that the film's comedy, as well as its horror elements, "rivals Hereditary in the cruel shock department", summing it up as a B+ effort.

Writing for Inverse, Eric Francisco commented that the film feels "like a victory lap after Hereditary," and that Aster "takes his sweet time to lull viewers into his clutches... But like how the characters experience time, its passage is a vague notion." Fransisco describes the film as "a sharp portrayal of gaslighting".

External links

• Official website
• Midsommar at IMDb
• Midsommar at Rotten Tomatoes