Midsommar (film)

Psychology student Dani Ardor is traumatized after her sister Terri kills herself and their parents by filling their home with carbon monoxide. The incident strains Dani's relationship with her emotionally distant boyfriend, cultural anthropology student Christian Hughes. She later learns that Christian and his friends Mark and Josh have been invited by their mutual Swedish friend Pelle to attend a midsummer celebration at Pelle's ancestral commune, the Hårga, in Hälsingland. The celebration occurs only once every 90 years and Josh, also an anthropology student, wants to write his thesis on it. Christian hid the trip from Dani, wanting to break up with her before leaving, but invites her along after she finds out about it, although he does not think she will actually come.

The group flies to Sweden and arrives at the commune, where they meet Simon and Connie, an English couple from London who were invited by Pelle's communal brother Ingemar. He offers the group psychedelic mushrooms, and Dani has hallucinations of Terri while under the drug's influence. Pelle gives Dani a drawing for her birthday, and pulls Christian aside to remind him when Dani unintentionally reveals that Christian forgot.

Tensions rise after the group witnesses an ättestupa, a tradition which sees two commune elders attempt to kill themselves by leaping from a cliff onto a rock. When one of the elders survives the fall, the commune members mimic his wails of agony and crush his skull with a mallet, while commune elder Siv attempts to calm Dani and her friends by explaining that this is a normal thing every member does when they reach the age of 72. The scene deeply disturbs the group of visitors, but they decide to stay long enough for Josh to finish his thesis.

Christian also decides to write his thesis on the Hårga, creating a rift between him and Josh, who accuses him of copying his idea. Dani attempts to leave, but Pelle convinces her to stay, explaining his own connection to the community after he was orphaned. While Simon and Connie decide to leave, an elder tells Connie that Simon has already left without her. Confused and suspicious, Connie decides to leave on her own; later, a woman's wail is heard in the distance. After Mark unwittingly urinates on an ancestral tree and incites the fury of the commune, he is lured away during dinner by Inga, who seemed to be interested in him. That night, Josh sneaks into the temple to take a photograph of the commune's sacred runic text, which an elder had previously forbidden him from doing. He sees a man wearing Mark's clothes and skinned face and is hit over the head from behind, after which his body is dragged away.

The next day, Dani is coerced into taking more psychedelic drugs and ends up winning a maypole dancing competition, subsequently being crowned May Queen. At the same time, Christian is given more drugs before being coerced into a sex ritual designed to impregnate one of the young females, Maja, while older naked female members watch. After discovering Christian and Maja having sex, Dani has a panic attack, during which the commune's younger women surround her and mimic her cries. After the ritual, Christian comes to his senses and tries to run away, but he instead discovers Josh's leg planted in a flowerbed and Simon's body turned into a blood eagle in a barn. Christian is then paralyzed by an elder.

The commune leaders explain to Dani that, to purge the commune of its evil, nine human sacrifices must be offered. The first four victims are outsiders (Mark, Josh, Simon, and Connie) lured to them by Pelle and Ingemar, while the next four victims must be commune members. As May Queen, Dani must choose either Christian or a local villager to be the ninth and final victim. She chooses to sacrifice Christian, who is stuffed into a disemboweled brown bear's body and placed in a small wooden temple alongside the other sacrifices. The temple is set on fire and the commune members celebrate by mimicking the screams and wails of those being burned alive. Dani initially sobs in horror, but gradually begins to smile.

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, produced the film alongside Square Peg, with A24 distributing.[4] According to Aster, he had been approached by B-Reel 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."[5] Aster ultimately devised a plot 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."[5]

In July 2018, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, Vilhem Blomgren, William Jackson Harper, Ellora Torchia, and Archie Madekwe joined the cast.[6][7] Principal photography began on July 30, 2018, in Budapest, Hungary, and wrapped in October 2018.[8]

In April 2020, A24 announced it would be auctioning off props from its films and television series, including the 10,000-silk-flower May Queen dress worn by Florence Pugh, which was purchased by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures for $65,000.[9] Other items from the film that sold at auction were the bear headdress worn by Jack Reynor for $4,760, the mallet used to crush a cult member's skull for $10,000, and other villager costumes that sold in the $4,500 range. All the proceeds from the Midsommar collection raised over $100,000 for the FDNY Foundation.[10]

Midsommar had a pre-release screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in New York City, on June 18, 2019.[11] The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2019.[12] It was released in Sweden on July 10, 2019.

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