Midsommar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the 2003 film Midsommer.
For the season, see midsummer.

Midsommar
Midsommar (2019 film poster).png
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAri Aster
Written byAri Aster
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPawel Pogorzelski
Edited byLucian Johnston
Music byBobby Krlic
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • June 18, 2019 (2019-06-18) (Alamo Drafthouse Cinema)
  • July 3, 2019 (2019-07-03) (United States)
  • July 10, 2019 (2019-07-10) (Sweden)
Running time
148 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • Sweden[1]
LanguageEnglish[2]
Budget$9 million[3]
Box office$48 million[3]

Midsommar is a 2019 folk horror film written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, and Will Poulter. It follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years, only to find themselves in the clutches of a Scandinavian pagan cult.

A co-production between the United States and Sweden, the film was initially pitched to Aster as a straightforward slasher film set among Swedish cultists.[4] Aster devised a screenplay using elements of the concept, but made a deteriorating relationship the central conflict after he experienced a difficult breakup. The music was composed by British electronic musician Bobby Krlic. The film was shot on location in Budapest in the summer and autumn of 2018.

Midsommar 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 grossed $47.9 million and received positive reviews from critics, with many praising Aster's direction and Pugh's performance.

Plot[]

Psychology student Dani Ardor is left severely traumatized after her sister kills herself and their parents by filling their home with carbon monoxide. The incident further strains Dani's relationship with her increasingly distant boyfriend, cultural anthropology student Christian Hughes. As summer approaches, she learns that Christian and fellow students Mark and Josh have been invited by their Swedish friend Pelle to attend a midsummer celebration at his ancestral commune, the Hårga, in rural Hälsingland. The celebration occurs only once every 90 years and Josh, who is writing his thesis on European midsummer festivities, regards it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Christian had not discussed the trip with Dani as he was intending to break up with her prior to the incident with her family. After an argument, he reluctantly invites her along.

Upon arrival at the commune, 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 a bad trip, hallucinating about her deceased family. The day after their arrival, the group witness an ättestupa ceremony; where two elders commit suicide by jumping from a nearby cliff onto the rocks below. When one of the elders partially survives the fall, the commune members mimic his wails of agony and promptly mercy-kill him with a mallet. Commune elder Siv attempts to calm Connie and Simon, explaining that every member of their community does this at the age of 72.

Christian also decides to write his thesis on the Hårga commune, angering Josh for plagiarizing his idea. Disturbed by the ceremonies, Dani attempts to leave, but is convinced to stay by Pelle. He explains that he too was orphaned after his parents died in a fire, and the commune became his new family. Connie and Simon insist on leaving and are supposedly driven to a nearby train station one at a time. During his thesis research, Christian is told that to avoid incest, outsiders are sometimes brought in to the commune for "mating" purposes. He is propositioned to participate, but refuses. After unwittingly urinating on a sacred tree, Mark is lured away from the group by one of the female commune members. That night, Josh sneaks out of bed to secretly photograph one of the commune's sacred texts but is bludgeoned and dragged away by someone wearing a skin mask of Mark's face.

The next day, both Dani and Christian are separately coerced into taking a hallucinogenic drink. Dani wins a maypole dancing competition and is crowned May Queen. Meanwhile, Christian is led away and engages in a sex ritual designed to impregnate Maja, a young female member of the Hårga, while older naked female members watch and mimic Maja's moans. Dani, witnessing the ritual and believing that Christian is cheating on her, has a panic attack, while the commune's women surround her and mimic her cries. After the ritual, Christian comes to his senses and tries to flee. He discovers Josh's leg planted in a flowerbed and Simon's body on display in a barn, before being paralyzed by an elder.

For the final ceremony, the commune leaders explain that in order to purge the commune of its evil, nine human sacrifices must be offered. The first four victims are outsiders lured to them by Pelle and Ingemar, while the next four victims must be from the commune. As May Queen, Dani must choose either Christian or a commune member to be the final sacrificial victim. She chooses Christian, who is stuffed into a disemboweled brown bear's body and placed in a triangular wooden temple alongside other sacrifices. It is set on fire and the commune members mimic the screams and wails of those being burned alive. Dani initially sobs in horror and grief, but gradually begins to smile.

Cast[]

  • Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor
  • Jack Reynor as Christian Hughes
  • Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle
  • William Jackson Harper as Josh
  • Will Poulter as Mark
  • Ellora Torchia as Connie
  • Archie Madekwe as Simon
  • Henrik Norlén as Ulf
  • Gunnel Fred as Siv
  • Isabelle Grill as Maja
  • Agnes Rase as Dagny
  • Julia Ragnarsson as Inga
  • Mats Blomgren as Odd
  • Lars Väringer as Sten
  • Anna Åström as Karin
  • Hampus Hallberg as Ingemar
  • Liv Mjönes as Ulla
  • Louise Peterhoff as Hanna
  • Katarina Weidhagen as Ylva
  • Björn Andrésen as Dan
  • Tomas Engström as Jarl
  • Dag Andersson as Sven
  • Lennart R. Svensson as Mats
  • Anders Beckman as Arne
  • Rebecka Johnston as Ulrika
  • Tove Skeidsvoll as Majvor
  • Anders Back as Valentin
  • Anki Larsson as Irma
  • Levente Puczkó-Smith as Ruben
  • Gabriella Fón as Dani's mother
  • Zsolt Bojári as Dani's father
  • Klaudia Csányi as Terri Ardor

Production[]

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.[5] 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."[6] 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."[6]

In July 2018, Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, Vilhem Blomgren, William Jackson Harper, Ellora Torchia, and Archie Madekwe joined the cast.[7][8] Principal photography began on July 30, 2018, in Budapest, Hungary, and wrapped in October 2018.[9]

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.[10] 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.[11]

Soundtrack[]

Aster recruited British electronic musician The Haxan Cloak – real name Bobby Krlic – to compose the film's score, after writing the film while listening to his 2013 album Excavation. Krlic began composing the music before filming began, taking inspiration from Nordic folk music, collaborating closely with Aster. The film also makes use of diegetic music, where events on screen meld with the score.[12][13][14]

The soundtrack album was released on July 5, 2019 via Milan Records.[15]

Release[]

Midsommar had a pre-release screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in New York City, on June 18, 2019.[16] The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2019.[17] It was released in Sweden on July 10, 2019.

Director's cut[]

Aster's original 171-minute cut of the film, which A24 asked Aster to trim down for a wide theatrical release, had its world premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City on August 20, 2019.[18] It was shown in theaters across the United States for a weekend starting on August 29, 2019. The director's cut was released as an Apple TV exclusive on September 24, 2019.[19] On physical media, it saw a British release on Blu-ray and DVD on October 28, 2019,[20] an Australian Blu-ray release on November 6, 2019[21] and a US release on Blu-ray in July 2020.[22]

Home media[]

Midsommar was released on Digital HD on September 24, 2019, and on DVD and Blu-ray on October 8, 2019.[23] The director's cut of the film was then released on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as an A24 shop exclusive on July 20, 2020, in limited copies.[24]

Reception[]

Box office[]

Midsommar grossed $27.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $20.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $47.9 million.[3]

In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,707 theaters over its first five days.[25] It made $3 million on its first day, including $1.1 million from Tuesday night previews, which Deadline Hollywood called a "smashing start."[26][27] It went on to debut to $10.9 million, finishing sixth at the box office; IndieWire said it was "just decent" given its estimated $8 million budget, but the film would likely find success in home media.[28][29] In its second weekend, the film dropped 44% to $3.7 million, finishing in eighth,[30] and then made $1.6 million in its third weekend, finishing in ninth.[31]

Critical response[]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 398 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[33] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 3 out of 5 stars, with 50% saying they would definitely recommend it.[26]

John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as the "horror equivalent of a destination wedding", and "more unsettling than frightening, [but] still a trip worth taking."[34] Writing for Variety, Andrew Barker noted that it is "neither the masterpiece nor the disaster that the film's most vocal viewers are bound to claim. Rather, it's an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution."[35] David Edelstein of Vulture praised Pugh's performance as "amazingly vivid" and noted that Aster "paces Midsommar more like an opera (Wagner, not Puccini) than a scare picture," but concluded that the film "doesn't jell because its impulses are so bifurcated. It's a parable of a woman's religious awakening—that's also a woman's fantasy of revenge against a man who didn't meet her emotional needs—that's also a male director's masochistic fantasy of emasculation at the hands of a matriarchal cult."[6]

Eric Kohn of IndieWire summarized the film as a "perverse breakup movie," adding that "Aster doesn't always sink the biggest surprises, but he excels at twisting the knife. After a deflowering that makes Ken Russell's The Devils look tame, Aster finds his way to a startling reality check."[36] Time Out's Joshua Rothkopf awarded the film a 5/5 star-rating, writing, "A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer."[37]

For The A.V. Club, A. A. Dowd stated that the film "rivals Hereditary in the cruel shock department", and labeled it a "B+ effort".[38] Writing for Inverse, Eric Francisco commented that the film feels "like a victory lap after Hereditary", and that Aster "takes his sweet time to lull viewers into his clutches ... But like how the characters experience time, its passage is a vague notion." He described the film as "a sharp portrayal of gaslighting".[39] Richard Brody of The New Yorker said that the film "is built on such a void of insight and experience, such a void of character and relationships, that even the first level of the house of narrative cards can't stand." He added, "In the end, the subject of Midsommar is as simple as it is regressive: lucky Americans, stay home."[40]

Accolades[]

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref(s)
Gotham Independent Film Awards December 2, 2019 Best Actress Florence Pugh Nominated [41]
Best Screenplay Ari Aster Nominated
Hollywood Critics Association January 9, 2020 Best Horror Midsommar Nominated [42]
Independent Spirit Awards February 8, 2020 Best Cinematography Pawel Pogorzelski Nominated
Santa Barbara International Film Festival January 17, 2020 Virtuoso Award Florence Pugh Won [43]
Ivor Novello Awards September 2, 2020 Best Original Score Bobby Krlic Won [44]
Saturn Awards 2021 Best Horror Film Midsommar Nominated [45]

See also[]

  • The Wicker Man, a 1973 British folk horror film revolving around a pagan cult.

References[]

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  2. ^ "Midsommar". BBFC. Retrieved July 18, 2021.
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