History NightmareFuel / Midsommar

** If you look closely at the sheets when Dani is calling her parents, you'll see that they're still breathing. They were dying while she was making the call and probably could've been saved had Dani not followed Christian's advice. (According to the script, though, they're dead the whole time, so this could be either an accident that occurred during filming, or something added in production.)

*** Not to mention the [[BrokenSmile unnerving smile]] [[https://culturalhater.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/midsommar-gif.gif Dani gives in the film's final shot]], especially after witnessing the death of Christian and the other sacrifices. The true terror, however, perhaps doesn't come as much from what's happening throughout all this as it does from ''what's written in the film's script.'' Look through all the way to the end, and you'll find the film's final moments described with chilling language that paints the entire ending in a new, far more indescribably horrifying light.

* The opening tragedy which marks the trauma Dani deals with for the rest of the film. Dani's bipolar sister sends her an extremely distressing email and proceeds to not respond. The same night, Dani receives a call: her parents and sister are dead. The sister attached two garden hoses to the two car's exhaust pipes in the garage, one leading under the parent's bedroom door which is otherwise sealed off with duct tape, and the other taped directly to her ''mouth''. Her sister and the taped hose are in the reflection pictured above.

** The crowd's very loud moans when the man survives his fall and they have to finish his demise.
* Dani's nightmare that her friends and boyfriend sneak away in their cars, promptly abandoning her at the village. Dani screams, but her screams only come out inaudible and thick with black smoke. The next shots show a brief gross close-up of the old woman's destroyed face from jumping to her death, Dani's late sister staring back at her, the old man getting his head caved in and then reforming, and Dani's dead parents and sister lying at the bottom of the sacrificial cliff with the exhaust fumes and water hose still taped to her sister's mouth.

* Mark goes off with one of the village girls and is never seen or heard from again. Whatever was done to him, all we know is it ended with his face being torn off and worn as a mask. His sacrificial effigy in the final scene looks almost like a straw stuffed scarecrow wearing the skin mask. [[NothingIsScarier So what happened to the rest of him?]]

*** A version of the scene with isolated dialogue and sound effects linked below allows you to hear his gurgling, wheezing, attempting to scream, and struggling to breathe in its full glory. Sweet dreams.

* Christian coming across Simon's flayed body spread out as a blood eagle and being pecked at by chickens is bad enough. [[AndIMustScream Then he (and the audience) sees that his lungs are still moving]]. Hopefully it's just another instance of the film's images warping, right? Nope -- [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Midsommar/comments/f3k67i/if_you_mute_all_audio_tracks_but_no_3_you_can/ Simon's labored breathing is included in the audio mix]]. [[FridgeHorror Fuck]].

** If you look closely at the sheets when Dani is calling her parents, you'll see that they're still breathing. They were dying while she was making the call and probably could've been saved had Dani not followed Christian's advice. (According to the script, though, they're dead the whole time, so this could be either an accident when filming, or something added in production.)
* The frighteningly realistic depiction of what a bad hallucinogenic trip looks and feels like. Dani is zoning out to nature on shrooms when Mark mentions "family" in a sentence, and as her recent traumatic event suddenly all comes back to her, she proceeds to spiral downwards in her trip quickly: nature begins to flow and ebb almost oppressively, she hallucinates that a nearby group of people minding their own business are all laughing at her, and a nearby friend offering her a helping hand almost appears to be leering at her in a subtle yet grotesque visual effect. She rushes to a nearby bathroom in the darkness in attempt to calm down, but this ends poorly (see the header photo)...
** Dani then hallucinates seeing her dead sister's body looking back at her in the dark, with the hose still taped to her mouth; and then she looks in the mirror and sees her face becoming visually distorted with one of her eyeballs seemingly popping out. She immediately runs out into the woods panicking.
** Before awakening, Dani dreams of police sirens and lights, before it cuts to both her dead parent's and sister's bodies sitting side to side on the living room couch in the dark, and her sister looking back at her eerily smiling...

** The woman smearing the blood from her hands onto one of the gravestones just before jumping from the cliff.

** The brief gross close-up of the man's severely broken leg. Upon closer inspection shows a bee hovering around it.
** And the crowd's very loud moans when the man survives his fall and they have to finish his demise.
* Dani's nightmare that her friends and boyfriend sneak away in their cars, promptly abandoning her at the village. Dani screams but her screams only come out inaudible and thick with black smoke. The next shots show a brief gross close-up of the old woman's destroyed face from jumping to her death, Dani's late sister staring back at her, the old man getting his head caved in and then reforming, and Dani's dead parents and sister lying at the bottom of the sacrificial cliff with the exhaust fumes and water hose still taped to her sister's mouth.

*** Not to mention the [[BrokenSmile unnerving smile]] [[https://culturalhater.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/midsommar-gif.gif Dani gives at the film's ending]], especially after witnessing the death of Christian and the other sacrifices. The true terror, however, perhaps doesn't come as much from what's happening throughout all this as it does from ''what's written in the film's script.'' Look through all the way to the end, and you'll find the film's final moments described with chilling language that paints the entire ending in a new, far more indescribably horrifying light.

*** Aster also said it is indeed a nine-day festival...but the movie didn't last nine days. This asks one very important, very terrifying question that we never get the answer to: if what we saw wasn't even the first half, ''[[NothingIsScarier then what does the rest of the festival entail?]]''

* Three concurrent scenes end with the characters faintly hearing Connie screaming in the distance. [[NothingIsScarier We never find out what she saw or what was done to her that caused her to scream.]] The next time we see Connie, her dead body is lying in a wheelbarrow pale, soaking wet, and distended, so we can only imagine how harrowing her final moments were.

* All of the children shown throughout the film are condemned to this fate. They'll grow up, lure innocent outsiders into the village, and allow them to suffer the same fates as Dani and her friends. And this is all treated as ''[[ConditionedToAcceptHorror normal]]''.

* [[PunctuatedForEmphasis The whole.]] [[TheBadGuyWins Damn.]] [[DownerEnding Ending.]] Where to begin?

* The frighteningly realistic depiction of what a bad hallucinogenic trip looks and feels like. Dani is zoning out to nature on shrooms when someone mentions "family" in a sentence, and as her recent traumatic event suddenly all comes back to her, she proceeds to spiral downwards in her trip quickly: nature begins to flow and ebb almost oppressively, she hallucinates that a nearby group of people minding their own business are all laughing at her, and a nearby friend offering her a helping hand almost appears to be leering at her in a subtle yet grotesque visual effect. She rushes to a nearby bathroom in the darkness in attempt to calm down, but this ends poorly (see the header photo)...

* Maja is only sixteen years old during the sex ritual where she is impregnated by Christian. How fucked up is a sex scene where neither party consents?