Midsommar
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Midsommar is a 2019 folk 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 occurs once every ninety years and find themselves in the clutches 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 the 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 autumn of 2018.
Midsommar premiered at the ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles before it was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2019 by A24 and in Sweden on July 10, 2019 by Nordisk Film. The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Aster's direction and Pugh's performance.
Plot
College student Dani Ardor suffers emotional trauma after her sister kills their parents and commits suicide. The incident further strains Dani's relationship with her emotionally-distant boyfriend, Christian Hughes, an anthropology graduate student.
The following summer, Dani learns that Christian and his friends, Mark and Josh, have been invited by their Swedish friend, Pelle, to attend a midsummer celebration at Pelle's ancestral commune in Sweden, the Hårga. She confronts Christian for not telling her and he awkwardly invites her to join them. When they arrive at the commune, they meet Simon and Connie, an English couple invited by Pelle's brother Ingemar. He offers the group psilocybin, and under the influence of the drug, Dani has hallucinations of her dead sister.
Tensions rise after the group witnesses an ättestupa ritual in which the two commune elders commit senicide by leaping from a clifftop. When the male elder survives the fall, the cult mimic his wails of agony and crush his skull with a mallet. The scene disturbs the group but they decide to stay, both at the behest of Pelle and because the Hårga are the subject of Josh's thesis. Simon and Connie decide to leave, but Connie vanishes after being told Simon left for the train station without her.
Christian chooses the Hårga as the subject of his own thesis, causing a rift between him and Josh. Josh attempts to solicit more information on the commune's ancient runic practices, which are based on paintings made by a deformed member whom they consider an oracle. After Mark unwittingly urinates on an ancestral tree and incites the fury of the cult, he is lured away by a female member. That night, Josh sneaks into a temple to photograph their sacred runic text. When he is distracted by a partially nude man wearing Mark's skinned face, he is hit over the head with a giant mallet before his body is dragged out of the temple.
The next day, Dani is coerced into taking more psychedelics and participates in a maypole dancing competition. She wins and is crowned the "May Queen". At the same time, Christian is drugged and groomed to participate in a ritual in which he impregnates member Maja while other women watch. After discovering Christian and Maja having sex, Dani has a panic attack and several of the Hårga women wail with her. Shortly after, a disoriented Christian discovers Josh's buried leg and finds Simon, who has been ritually dismembered as a blood eagle. Christian is then paralysed by an elder.
The cult explains that, at the conclusion of the ritual, nine human sacrifices must be offered. The first four victims are outsiders—Josh, Mark, Connie, and Simon—lured to them by Pelle and Ingemar. The next four victims are cult members—the two dead elders, Ingemar, and another villager. Dani, as the May Queen, has to choose the ninth and final victim that must be an outsider or a villager. Bitter and heartbroken, she chooses to sacrifice Christian. Still paralysed, he is stuffed into a disembowelled bear and placed in a temple alongside the ritually-prepared corpses of the other sacrifices as well as the two still-living volunteer villagers. As the temple burns and the cult celebrates the completion of their ritual, Dani at first sobs in horror but gradually begins to smile.
Cast
See also
- 2019 in film
- List of American films
- List of Swedish films of the 2010s
- List of horror films of 2019
- The Wicker Man, 1973 British horror film with similar plot elements
- Midsommer, 2003 Danish horror film set in Sweden over the summer solstice, remade in U.S. as Solstice in 2008
