Midsommar

Midsommar is the 2019 folk horror film written and directed by Ari Aster, a daylight nightmare about grief, codependence and ritualised belonging. Set around a remote Swedish midsummer festival, it follows a fractured American group whose visit to an isolated rural community slowly turns from unsettling cultural immersion into something far more corrosive. Its distinctive appeal lies in the collision between pastoral brightness and appalling behaviour: the film is often sunlit, ornate and visually seductive, yet it steadily converts that beauty into dread.

The Film File

• Original release year: 2019
• Director: Ari Aster
• Writer: Ari Aster
• Principal cast: Florence Pugh as Dani, Jack Reynor as Christian, William Jackson Harper as Josh, Will Poulter as Mark, Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle, Archie Madekwe as Simon, Ellora Torchia as Connie, Isabelle Grill as Maja
• Approximate runtime: 147 minutes for the theatrical version; the later director’s cut runs 171 minutes
• Country of production: United States, Sweden
• Relevant horror subgenres: folk horror, psychological horror, cult horror

Behind the Screams

Midsommar was conceived after Aster’s Hereditary, but he has described it as a different kind of horror story: one rooted in a breakup and the emotional logic of a relationship collapse. He has also said that he was approached by a Swedish production company about making a horror film set in Sweden, which helped nudge the project towards its rural Scandinavian setting. The film was produced with Square Peg, B-Reel Films and A24, and the village of Hårga was built from scratch for the production rather than shot as a ready-made location.

The film’s folklore is a deliberate blend of research and invention. Aster and production designer Henrik Svensson travelled in Sweden during development, drawing on regional imagery, customs and landscape while creating a community that feels rooted in tradition without pretending to be ethnographically exact. That matters because the film is not trying to stage a documentary version of Swedish midsummer. It is building a fictional ritual culture that can support a modern horror fable about grief, group pressure and emotional dependency.

One of the clearest production choices was the decision to push so much of the film into daylight. Rather than rely on darkness to conceal threat, Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski place unease in open air, white linen, flowers and open fields. The result is not simply a pretty counterpoint to horror convention. It is part of the film’s argument. Nothing here is hidden from view, yet the characters are still trapped in it. The later director’s cut, which extends the film to 171 minutes, adds more context and a few extra connective threads, but the theatrical version already establishes the core shape of the work.

Into the Dark

Dani, played by Florence Pugh, is dealing with devastating personal loss while her relationship with Christian, Jack Reynor’s increasingly evasive boyfriend, is already coming apart. When Christian plans a trip to Sweden with friends Josh, Mark and Pelle, Dani is drawn into the group at the last minute. The visit begins as a research trip tied to Pelle’s home community, a remote settlement preparing for a midsummer festival, but the longer they stay, the more the visitors realise that the rules, rituals and expectations of the place are not merely eccentric. They are governing everything.

The film’s horror emerges from a series of mismatches. The outsiders keep treating the community as if it were a quirky, slightly unsettling village. In reality, the villagers are operating according to a set of beliefs that are far more absolute, and the outsiders’ assumptions, arguments and academic habits only make them more vulnerable. Dani’s isolation intensifies as Christian’s selfishness becomes harder to excuse, and the festival’s supposedly communal warmth begins to feel less like welcome than containment. Midsommar is less interested in jump scares than in how easily a person in emotional distress can be folded into an environment that promises care while quietly demanding submission.

Spoilers ahead: the following paragraphs discuss major plot developments.

As the festival continues, the group’s situation turns openly murderous. Josh disappears after snooping, Mark is lured away and killed, and the newcomers slowly understand that the ceremonies around them are not symbolic decorations but preparations for sacrifice. The Hårga also engineer Christian’s humiliation and violation by drugging him and arranging his participation in a sexual rite with Maja, a younger villager chosen for reproduction. Dani is forced to witness this and, in the process, the film collapses the final barrier between her private grief and the community’s collective rituals. Her emotional shock is not incidental to the ending. It is the mechanism through which the cult absorbs her.

The climax sees the community’s nine sacrifices completed in the great temple fire. Christian is paralysed, stuffed into a bear carcass and placed among the victims, while Dani, now crowned May Queen, is given a choice that is less a choice than a ceremonial verdict. She selects Christian as the final sacrifice and watches the building burn. The ending matters because it is not framed as a clean triumph or a simple escape. Dani has been rescued from one deadening relationship only to be absorbed into another structure of power. The film’s final expression on her face remains ambiguous, but the plot itself is blunt: the cult has converted her pain into belonging, and belonging into complicity.

What Gets Under Your Skin

Midsommar works because its style is inseparable from its horror. The film’s brightness is not a gimmick, but a method of disorientation. By staging dread in broad daylight and wrapping it in floral abundance, folk ceremony and soft pastoral imagery, Aster denies viewers the usual visual cues of danger. That makes every social exchange more charged. Seemingly polite communal gestures, from shared meals to dances to seemingly benevolent explanations, carry an undertow of coercion. The film’s ritual sequences are especially effective because they are choreographed with a kind of institutional calm. Nothing needs to be screamed when the rules of the place are already doing the damage.

Florence Pugh gives the film its emotional anchor. Dani begins as a character defined by grief and fear of abandonment, but the performance keeps her from becoming merely passive. Her reactions are carefully scaled, so when the film pushes her towards fury, disgust and finally a kind of devastated surrender, those shifts feel earned. Jack Reynor, meanwhile, plays Christian without turning him into a cartoon villain. He is weaker and more self-serving than cruelly theatrical, which makes him frustrating in a recognisably human way. That weakness is crucial to the film’s design. The horror of the relationship is not that he is monstrous in an obvious way, but that he is ordinary enough to remain plausible until the damage is done.

Visually, the film is striking in its control of pattern, colour and symmetry. The village is presented as a total environment, one in which costumes, embroidery, wall paintings, field layouts and ceremonial objects all seem to belong to the same belief system. That coherence gives the film a dreamlike force, but it also serves the narrative: every image suggests a world that has been organised to absorb visitors. Bobby Krlic’s score contributes to that effect by moving between mournful, uncanny and engulfing textures rather than functioning as simple accompaniment. The sound design and music often seem to press in from beyond the frame, which suits a story in which the characters are constantly outnumbered by the place itself.

As horror, the film is visceral in some moments and deeply psychological in others. It contains graphic deaths and bodily distress, but those shocks are not the whole experience. The more lasting discomfort comes from watching a social system calmly dismantle the visitors’ assumptions while Dani’s emotional collapse is folded into the community’s rituals. The film’s strongest scenes do not just shock. They make it clear how a person can be manipulated through grief, guilt and the need to be chosen. That is what gives Midsommar its particular sting.

The Film’s Afterlife

Midsommar opened to strong critical attention in 2019 and settled into the kind of reputation that divides viewers while rewarding repeat scrutiny. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film is listed at 83% from critics and 63% from verified audience ratings, figures checked on 2 November 2026. That gap captures the film’s status neatly: admired for ambition, craft and atmosphere, but also likely to alienate viewers who want a more conventional horror rhythm or a clearer emotional distance from its characters. Its reputation has also grown within modern folk horror discourse, where it is regularly treated as a major contemporary example of the subgenre rather than a one-off curiosity.

Part of the film’s lasting presence comes from how thoroughly it commits to its own world. The theatrical cut remains the version most viewers encounter, but the longer director’s cut has helped keep discussion active by confirming how much material Aster wanted to include around the edges of the story. Even so, the film’s durability comes less from extra lore than from the precision of its central conceit: a breakup story turned into a daylight cult tragedy. That combination has kept it in circulation among horror fans who prefer their unease thoughtful, ugly and impossible to dismiss.