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Frequency of the ritual
- How often does this ritual actually take place? Pelle says it's every 90 years, a once-in-a-lifetime event. But, his comments about his parents burning up in a fire make me wonder if that's true. That made me think that it takes place every nine years, since the cult seems enamored with the number nine. Plus, I think Pelle knew that this is Dani's 27th birthday, a significant happening.
- It sounds from his early dialogue like they celebrate both solstices every year. They might not do every ceremony every time (presumably if they killed four outsiders a year they'd be in trouble), but that doesn't have to mean they don't do any of them outside of the ninety year cycle. Also, the film is only the first four days of a nine day festival, so the barn sacrifice may not even be the climax of the festivities.
- According to the Director's AMA, the every 90 years ceremony was the barn burning at the end. The fire that killed Pelle's parents seems unrelated, and could've just been an accident.
- Who says the 90-year ritual is the only time they stage a Human Sacrifice?
- In the director's cut Christian asks a cultist how frequently they've seen the cliff jumping ceremony, and is told that it's every time a member comes of age (turns 72) and so it happens a lot. This would have to mean they meet and have some ceremonies much more frequently that every 90 years. It's probably at least yearly, but they don't necessarily do the same series of ceremonies each time.
The Hårga's apparent empathy
- Do the cultists have some kind of psychic empathy with each other? They seem to all be on the same wavelength in general, and at the end, when the sacrified villagers are burnt alive, everyone watching seems to feel their pain.
- Being on the same wavelength is due to the brainwashing of being part of the cult (especially for those brought up in the cult, who's essentially programmed to be on that wavelength) and the shared pain is always something the cultists start to show after they hear screams and acting it out is a way to further their idea that they are all "connected".
- Yes, it seems less like they're actually psychically / physically connected and more that this is their way of presenting their connection to one another, by mimicking screams and shouts of pain or any other noise, as they do with Dani.
- It’s also another brainwashing technique. In addition to being a form of love-bombing, it tells everyone that their feelings aren’t special and that they don’t have any individuality. This theory is regarded as realistic and typical by Rick Alan Ross, a professional cult deprogrammer, when commenting on the film.[1]
The choice at the end of the ritual
- What would have happened to Christian if he had not been chosen to be sacrificed at the end by Dani? Would he have been killed anyway, or would he have to have lived out the rest of his life paralysed by the elders? Is there even an antidote to the powder used to paralyse him?
- The powder used to paralyze Christian is presumably "Zombie Powder", prevalent in Haitian voodoo. Usually as long as the dosage is correct, it's been properly made, and you don't accidentally get buried alive it will work its way out of your system in time. As for if she didn't pick Christian? They'd probably dump him off a cliff somewhere or keep him locked up for breeding purposes if Maja's baby turned out to be better than its father.
- Seeing how it is mentioned that new blood is periodically brought into the cult to keep the gene pool from getting too shallow, and how Maja seemed genuinely smitten with Christian, it seems likely that he would have been assimilated into the community the way they probably intend to do with Dani. Word of God confirms that the nine sacrifices only happen once every ninety years, if they were so casually murderous to people both within and outside the cult all the time it's unlikely they'd last very long.
The fly-covered lump
- After Dani is crowned May Queen we pan over to a table, a lump of brown with flies on it center focus. What the heck is it? Is it the herring they try to feed her earlier? I only ask because it looks distubingly similar to Charlie's head covered in ants.
Identity of the sacrifices
- Who are the two already-dead villagers offered as sacrifice, the ones that are impaled on trees during the final ritual? They can't be the same elders that killed themselves by throwing themselves off the cliff: those had their faces smashed to smithereens and also their bodies had been cremated (we are shown as their ashes are thrown at the base of the sacred tree Mark pisses on later).
- They are representations of those elder that jumped during the ättestupa. Note that the faces on the images on the effigies corresponds to them.
