Midsommar (2019) 🌻

Come for the Flowers. Leave Before the Group Activities.

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

A flower crown, blue skies, and somebody looking absolutely devastated. That poster is doing a very effective job of making a summer celebration look like something I should avoid.

As with my Isaac piece, this is a researched first-impressions review, rather than a claim that I’ve watched the movie. The rating reflects the concept’s appeal. And Midsommar has an interesting one: horror in a setting where the sunshine offers absolutely no reassurance.

Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Written and directed by Ari Aster, Midsommar follows grieving Dani and her boyfriend Christian on a trip to a remote Swedish midsummer festival. Their relationship is already struggling, and the welcoming community’s celebrations become increasingly disturbing.

That setup interests me because it connects two kinds of uncertainty. Dani needs emotional support, while the place offering hospitality may have intentions of its own. It creates a nasty question: when somebody finally makes you feel wanted, how much are you willing to overlook?

The daylight is another strong part of the concept. Darkness usually gives a horror movie somewhere to hide its threat. A bright field gives you a clear view and still leaves you wondering whether you should be there. Apparently the problem isn’t poor visibility. It’s the people smiling at you.

Character Rundown

Dani, played by Florence Pugh, is the central character. Grief makes her search for connection important to the premise. I’d want to judge how the film develops that need, because her emotional journey sounds like the thing that could make the rituals matter beyond their shock value.

Christian, played by Jack Reynor, is her boyfriend. Their deteriorating relationship creates the tension that travels with them. A partner can be physically present without providing the comfort somebody needs, and that distinction gives this story something uncomfortable to explore.

Pelle, played by Vilhelm Blomgren, is the friend connecting the visitors to the community. An invitation from someone familiar is much easier to accept than an invitation from a stranger. That makes his role particularly interesting to examine.

Josh, played by William Jackson Harper, approaches the trip through his academic interests. Mark, played by Will Poulter, brings a more careless attitude. Simon and Connie, played by Archie Madekwe and Ellora Torchia, are fellow visitors. These different perspectives give the story several ways for outsiders to respond to what they encounter.

Pacing / Episode Flow

The concept suggests a gradual progression from emotional discomfort to communal horror. For that approach to work for me, each ceremony and conversation would need to change how I understand the place or the people in it.

Slow pacing can be effective when it makes the next ordinary-looking interaction feel unsafe. The challenge is keeping that unease alive rather than simply stretching out the wait for something horrible.

That’s an open question until I watch. I’m interested in whether the relationship material and the festival develop together, because one should give the other weight. Beautiful scenery alone won’t carry an entire nightmare.

Pros

The daylight setting gives the horror a distinctive identity. Flowers and sunshine usually suggest comfort. Making those things part of an alarming invitation is a compelling idea.

The emotional premise is another attraction. Grief and loneliness create vulnerabilities that a manipulative community could exploit. That makes the potential danger more personal than a group of tourists simply finding the wrong village.

Aster has described combining a breakup story with folk horror, using the community to offer Dani needs that her relationship isn’t meeting. That gives the concept an interesting emotional structure. The question becomes whether the comfort is genuine, dangerous, or both in different ways.

And the poster deserves credit as a piece of presentation. The flower crown is enormous, but the tear makes it impossible to read the image as uncomplicated celebration. It sells the contradiction immediately.

Cons

My reservations are about what I’d need the film to accomplish.

The characters’ reasons for staying would need to convince me. Once hospitality becomes alarming, the story has to explain why leaving isn’t the obvious next step. Grief, social pressure and curiosity can complicate decisions, but the film still needs to earn those decisions.

The relationship conflict would also need development. I wouldn’t want Christian to exist purely as an excuse for the audience to approve whatever happens to him. Being a poor partner and deserving extreme violence are very different judgments.

Finally, ritual imagery can become decorative if the emotional story stops progressing. I’d want the beautiful, unsettling presentation to serve something underneath it. Otherwise, we’ve booked a very long vacation to a place with terrible customer service.

Final Thoughts

Midsommar offers an intriguing combination of grief, relationship strain, belonging and daylight horror. The idea of a community becoming attractive precisely because somebody feels isolated gives it real potential.

The poster makes the invitation look beautiful and upsetting at the same time. That contradiction is what draws my attention. I’m curious about whether the film turns it into sustained dread and a convincing emotional journey.

For now, the concept earns my interest. My actual enjoyment, response to the performances and verdict on the pacing remain undecided.

Rating

8/10 — provisional concept and first-impressions rating.

The bright setting and emotionally vulnerable protagonist make this a compelling horror premise. This is a rating of that appeal, rather than a final viewing score.

Spoiler Warning

Spoilers ahead for the theatrical story, including suicide, family deaths, graphic violence, sexual coercion and the ending.

Spoilers

Dani’s sister kills herself and their parents, leaving Dani devastated. Later, Pelle brings the visitors to the Hårga community. That opening loss matters because the festival’s offer of togetherness reaches someone whose family has just been taken away.

My interpretation is that the invitation becomes dangerous on an emotional level before its full purpose is clear. A grieving person’s need for support isn’t foolish. That makes exploiting it especially cruel.

The visitors witness two elders jumping from a cliff; a survivor is killed with a mallet. Aster describes this ceremony as a turning point for the visitors and the beginning of Dani’s indoctrination.

There’s something horrifying about a crowd treating brutality as ordinary. The calm response can become its own pressure: if everybody else accepts it, the outsider is made to feel like the one who doesn’t understand.

That doesn’t make the violence acceptable. My reading is that it shows how a group can make its own rules feel inevitable. A smiling explanation doesn’t erase what just happened.

The outsiders disappear or are killed. Dani is crowned May Queen, while Christian is drugged and drawn into a sexual ritual with Maja. Dani sees them and breaks down; the women surround her and mirror her crying.

That shared crying can be read as both emotional recognition and a means of drawing Dani further into the group. Somebody finally responds to her pain, but the surrounding situation makes that comfort difficult to trust.

Christian’s treatment also matters. His failures as a boyfriend do not make drugging and sexual coercion harmless. Reducing that sequence to ordinary cheating would overlook the circumstances the community creates.

For the final sacrifice, Dani chooses Christian over a villager. He is placed inside a bear’s body and burned in a temple with the other sacrifices. Dani eventually smiles. Aster intended the ending to offer a feeling of release that becomes troubling when reconsidered.

My interpretation is that the smile doesn’t establish that she is safe. Feeling accepted by a violent group and escaping its control are different things. The ending’s disturbing potential lies in that gap.

You can understand why Dani might crave belonging without treating the Hårga as her rescuers. Their offer meets an emotional need while binding it to cruelty.

That is the most compelling part of the concept for me: a nightmare can offer someone precisely what they’re missing. Recognizing the offer as dangerous doesn’t necessarily make it easy to resist.

Come for the flowers. Leave before the group activities.


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Anyways hope y’all enjoy today’s review.