Midsommar (2019)

At a glance

Director	Ari Aster
Release year	2019
Runtime	148 minutes (171 in the director’s cut)
Genre	Folk horror
Starring	Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren

Plot

Dani Ardor loses her family in one night. Her boyfriend, Christian, stays with her because leaving would look worse. His friends are planning a trip to Sweden for a midsummer festival in a commune where Pelle grew up. Dani comes along. The festival is nine days, the sun does not set, and the ceremonies are not metaphors the visitors can skip.

The outsiders are anthropologists for about a day. Then they are guests, then they are material. Dani is the one the commune watches. Christian is the one who treats the trip as research and as an exit from the relationship. The film is bright the whole way through. The horror is not waiting for dark.

Production

Ari Aster wrote Midsommar after Hereditary, partly as a breakup film. A24 produced it. Florence Pugh plays Dani. Jack Reynor is Christian. It was shot in Hungary, on sets built to look like a Swedish commune, because shooting in Sweden on that scale was not the plan. The budget was about $9 million. It premiered in the United States on July 3, 2019.

The theatrical cut runs 148 minutes. A director’s cut, about 171, adds scenes that make Christian worse and the commune’s rules clearer. Bobby Krlic, as the Haxan Cloak, wrote the score. The costumes and the flower arrangements are plot. Aster has said the film is a fairy tale about a woman finding a family that wants her, and that the cost of that family is on screen.

Cast

Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor
Jack Reynor as Christian Hughes
Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle
William Jackson Harper as Josh
Will Poulter as Mark
Gunnel Fred as Siv

Trivia

The daylight is the point. Night scenes are almost absent.
The director’s cut is the longer one, not a different ending.
Pugh has said the crying scenes were scheduled, not sprung on her.
The commune’s language and runes were built for the film, not copied from one village.
Aster’s previous film is Hereditary. Both are about grief that a group can use.
The maypole and the bear are not background. They are the last act’s tools.