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  • Accidental Aesop:
    • While the intentional message seems to hew closer to ridding yourself of the bad influences in your life, in the end the message can come across as saying that it feels a lot better to be in a toxic, manipulative relationship that puts you on a pedestal rather than one that mostly ignores you.
    • Seeking acceptance only externally can put you in harm's way.
    • Another more minor one: before going somewhere foreign, make sure you're aware and understanding of the culture of it and ensure that you don't end up offending it.
    • There have been allusions made to American foreign policy in the early 2000s: Americans invading a distant culture they don't understand or particularly respect, with the secret goal of profiteering from it, only to be trapped in a protracted and bloody quagmire where nobody's leaving unscathed.
  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: There's no denying Christian is a lousy boyfriend towards Dani and can be a selfish, manipulative tool at times even towards his so-called friends, but it's highly questionable if he's being intentionally abusive or dangerous in any way and the extreme Humiliation Conga and brutal execution (approved by Dani) at the hands of the Hårga he ends up going through has moved him closer to Jerkass Woobie in some viewer's eyes.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Christian and Dani and the nature of their relationship are heavily subjected to this.
    • Is Dani a tragic anti-heroine whose sanity slowly deteriorates over the course of the movie, making her easy prey for the Hårga to manipulate her into joining their violent rituals in the end? A Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, who despite being clearly mistreated/neglected by her American friends ultimately decides to take an extreme and impulsive act of revenge, perhaps aided by the disorienting factors of the midnight sun and shrooms, and is in for some terrible survivor's guilt and a trapped situation with the Hårga once her high finally comes down? Or, considering she was at least somewhat aware of the cult's brutality and their plans for Christian, is she a bit more aware and manipulative of the environment around her than she lets on? Was her approval of the executions out of any sense of need or safety, or simply out of personal desire? How much did her presence on the trip affect the ultimate fate of her American friends? Is her final decision meant to be taken as cathartic or ominous, or is it all part of a grand tragedy revolving around a broken woman? The script seems to lean towards the Sanity Slippage interpretation, since it describes Dani's feelings in the final scene as "a joy known only to the insane".
    • Is there something more sinister or calculated about Christian's callous and occasionally manipulative behavior towards Dani and his friends? Is he Obfuscating Stupidity to get what he wants? Is he an immature brat who believes himself to be a Nice Guy? Or is he just as ill-equipped to handle Dani's terrible situation as most people in his position would be? Is his inability to break up with Dani a sign of a weak will, or a conscience that prevents him from leaving Dani in the wake of such unimaginable trauma? How much responsibility does he share for not finding the help Dani clearly needed, and how much did that affect his ultimate fate in the end?
    • In the end, is Christian ultimately Hoist by His Own Petard for his many failings, or is it a case of extreme Disproportionate Retribution by a deceived woman scorned? Does he put Dani in any sort of genuine danger that might make her feel his death was necessary, or is she being manipulated by the Hårga and the disorienting midnight sun? That Christian's infidelity was mostly non-consensual, and that Dani had at least a good idea the Hårga were trying to put a spell on him, make the motives for Dani's final actions and how much we're meant to sympathize with her or with Christian... debatable, to say the least.
    • Is Josh an ethical anthropologist, or an exploitative voyeur? Was he ever going to ask Pelle for permission to write his thesis on the Hårga, or did he only cop to it because Christian asked outright? Christian piggybacking on Josh's thesis is a dick move, but what ownership does Josh really have over the Hårga's culture?
    • Pelle. Is he genuinely sympathetic towards Dani's plight and really believes the Hårga will help her or just seeking glory for himself? Does he in fact have a crush on her and / or is he trying to manipulate her into joining the cult all along? Does he have any genuine intuition that Dani will fit in there, or does he simply plan to bully and manipulate her into staying?
    • Alternatively you could make a case that Pelle himself has been so screwed up mentally by the Hårga that in his own twisted way he thinks he's doing good. If you see Dani as having been "manipulated" by the cult, then it stands to reason that Pelle definitely was, given that Dani spent at most weeks with them whilst Pelle spent his whole life with them.
    • Maja is Pelle's sister. The one boy in his friend group she targets is the one who has a girlfriend (Mark for example is the resident womanizer and might have made for an easier target). It wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that Pelle might have told her about Dani and Christian's situation, and her selecting Christian to participate in the fertility ritual was part of a greater plan to get Dani to join the cult. Exactly when this was decided is up for debate.
    • Was Mark coerced into a similar ritual to Christian before they killed him?
    • Exactly who is the audience's sympathy supposed to be with? The visitors? The Hårga? Are we supposed to sympathize with Dani or those who are burned alive in the temple at the end? Everybody? Nobody?
  • Awesome Music: Bobby Krlic's score makes excellent use of "Psycho" Strings and perfectly compliments every scene. Special mention goes to the Soundtrack Dissonance-laden finale.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Dani became a major lightning rod with viewers by the end, mainly because of the general extremity of the film's final act. Even more neutral observers had a tough time deciding if she was meant to be the hero, victim or villain of the story. Supporters generally tend to see her as one of the most fascinating Anti-Heroines and a particularly devastating study of personal trauma and complete mental breakdown all aided by the debilitating effects of the toxic personal influences around her, detractors tend to view her more as a co-dependent Vanilla Protagonist whose entire plot trajectory is decided by the actions of others and who gets little to do than blubber or look cross for most of the movie, as well as some feeling that her tragic backstory and character depths are ignored for a romantic revenge plot, which even a section of both detractors and supporters found offensive. That Ari Aster has even stated that was at least somewhat inspired by a real-life breakup and he sees Dani as an Author Avatar (even with how much to take that at face value) has only made her more divisive in most viewers eyes.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: One of the most remembered (and controversial!) scenes in the film is when Christian is tricked into taking part in a fertility ritual and then runs around for several minutes in the nude. Complete with Male Frontal Nudity from Jack Reynor (at the actor's own suggestion).
  • Broken Base:
    • The director's cut and the alteration it makes to some of the characters has been a bit divisive. Some say it clarifies the character's relationships and motivations better and especially getting to the heart of what's so off between Dani and Christian, as well as spending a little more time with the Hårga and the Midsommar ritual that adds to the overall horror; to others it can all come across like a blatant Author's Saving Throw that creates a lot more character inconsistencies/Out of Character moments (particularly Christian toggling between Manipulative Bastard and Too Dumb to Live), and also worsening the film's already heavy Ending Fatigue.
    • The ending itself, as despite Christian's Asshole Victim status having him being drugged and led into a forced "fertility ritual" which, after Dani witnesses, leads to his extremely Cruel and Unusual Death being personally approved by her has undoubtedly divided audiences; a few have called out a major Double Standard for those who are okay with it or tend to heavily distance their enjoyment of the movie from that scene, and even some who were rooting for a Take That, Scrappy! moment towards Christian questioned if Aster took things too far. While some debated it at face value whether or not Christian's fate was "earned" in the end, another side of the audience tend to argue whether it was a particularly ingenious Bait-and-Switch / Downer Ending finale in which Aster's own directorial choices perfectly mirrored the Hårga's own manipulative grooming, or whether he was trying too hard to have it both ways as Moment of Awesome for Dani while also having her cross a Moral Event Horizon at the end.
  • Catharsis Factor: For those rooting for the demise of Christian and his friends, the ending will give you this. Ari Aster has said in interviews that he was going for a "toxic catharsis" — i.e. deliberately subverting the idea of this trope until a Downer Ending and a Catharsis Factor aren't mutually exclusive.
  • Cliché Storm: A possible criticism of the film is that it hits basically every possible trope you could expect from a horror movie about a cult: ritualistic suicide, ritualistic human sacrifice, incest, secretive and manipulative leaders, arranged sex/marriage, creepy artwork, and so on. However, critics and viewers tend to emphasize Midsommar's characterization and aesthetics over the originality of its plot.
  • Critical Dissonance: As was the case for Hereditary, critical reviews were glowing, but audiences were not as universally acceptive — the Rotten Tomatoes score is 83% for critics and 63% for viewers, and it had a fairly low C+ on Cinemascore.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • There are a lot of people who think the Hårga are the good guys and Dani will be safe with them. While this is somewhat understandable due to the extreme Jerkass nature of the American visitors, this pointedly overlooks how violent, manipulative, and dangerous they are. Killing Connie (who hadn't done anything wrong except wanting to leave) or even Simon (sure, he interrupted their ritual but...) is really a classic example. Plus, even if Dani does have a good life there, remember what happens at age 72? Not to mention the fact that there are heavy implications of them actually being a neo-Nazi group and not an ancient religion at all: some of the Swedish text left untranslated is anti-immigrant slogans, they are all white (despite regularly recruiting people from all over the world, suggesting a deliberate choice to only recruit white people) while targeting people of colour to kill first, and the usage of Elder Futhark specifically is common among neo-Nazi groups (the film also depicts some non-Elder-Futhark runes that are popular with such groups). Ari Aster being Jewish would almost certainly have been well aware of these implications, which makes how easily Dani is manipulated into the cult and how many of the fanbase sympathise with them (to the point where many of them would clearly also be indoctrinated very easily if they were in her place) all the more disturbing.
    • Mark definitely has his fans despite being an even more boorish (if less sinister) jerkass than his friends and similarly having a general indifference to the cult's brutality that becomes more apparent in the director's cut.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Mark, due to his comedic timing and being played by Will Poulter.
  • Epileptic Trees: With this film involving cults and being directed by Ari Aster for A24, tons of people are speculating that this film takes place in the same universe as Ari's previous movie (also for A24), Hereditary.
  • Fanfic Fuel: Dani's life in the cult after the burning ritual, as well as Christian and Maja's baby finding out about of his/her's father's fate and whether or not they take revenge on Dani or the entire cult itself has proved quite enticing to fanfic writers.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Going by the number of fanfics, Dani/Pelle is far more popular than Dani/Christian.
  • Fanon: Pelle and Dani's kid being named Ingemar, after Pelle's brother.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Simon has his lungs extracted from his body and splayed out like wings while he is still alive. This is a method of ritual execution found in Norse sagas called the Blood Eagle.
    • There is a lot of untranslated Swedish and unremarked Swedish mythology in the film, specifically in the art hanging around the Hårga and pagan rituals (not all of it Swedish).
      • Some of the Swedish text is anti-immigration slogans, an early indicator of how disturbing the Hårga truly are. Similarly, several of the runes have been associated with neo-Nazi groups, and when they're driving to the commune, they pass a banner advertising a Swedish far-right political party. A book on Nazi usage of runes can be spotted early in the film as further Foreshadowing of this.
  • Ham and Cheese: Near the end of the movie, the Hårgan next to Pelle is clearly laughing and having the time of his life as he stamps around. In a scene where everyone is supposed to be angry and upset, this stands out like a sore thumb.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The especially brutal deaths of all the BIPOCs, who, with the exception of Josh were entirely innocent; Nazi imagery and anti-immigrant propaganda scattered throughout the film becomes harsher in hindsight with the rise of the Sweden Democratic party and the uptick in hate crimes against BIPOCs in Sweden see here: https://archive.ph/oro8n
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Despite Christian being a bad boyfriend to Dani and generally a selfish, at times manipulative, asshole to both her and his own friends, does that mean a fair karmic payback is being raped through hypnosis, paralyzed and then burned alive? (which was ordered by his own (albeit brainwashed and now insane) girlfriend no less).
    • Pelle could be seen as this too. Yes, he did knowingly lead several innocent people to their doom, but consider that he's been raised to believe that being sacrificed is something honorable. He probably thought he was doing them a favor.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The cult are undoubtedly evil and incredibly disturbed in many ways, but Dani's friends and boyfriend are so vapid, self-absorbed, and unsympathetic to Dani's emotional state that a disturbing number of viewers saw their horrific deaths as a good thing.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: The cinematography and overall production design get near unanimous praise from viewers - some of whom say they're reason enough to watch. Florence Pugh's performance is a close second; as divisive a character as Dani is, it's agreed that Florence at least kills the role.
  • Karmic Overkill: Christian being drugged, raped via coerced participation in a fertility ritual, Mistaken for Cheating and then paralyzed and burned to death in a human sacrifice is a lot further than a lot of people wanted him to suffer.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Sewn into a bear and set on fire" spread through the internet as an appropriate fate for terrible or abusive boyfriends.
    • But do you feel held by him?
    • Puns about Christian's grislynote  fate.
    • Identifying Josh as Chidi Anagonye, another popular character played by William Jackson Harper.
    • In Japan, this movie often gets made fun of for being a Darker and Edgier version of an early 2000s comedy-mystery Dorama called Trick, due to the latter dealing with cults almost on a weekly basis.
    • Also, the movie drew some buzz in Japan due to one of the elders (the old man whose ritual suicide goes wrong) being played by Björn Andrésen, who decades ago became famous for Morte a Venezia, spent some time in Japan itself as a teen idol, and thus directly and indirectly served as a huge influence on the Bishōnen stock figure ​in anime and manga, particularly blond variants (pioneering shoujo manga artist Keiko Takemiya was especially influenced by his looks; Gilbert from Kaze to Ki no Uta was specifically modeled after him). "Then and now" comparisons made the rounds on social media.
    • This shot of Dani walking while slowly breaking down into tears has been commonly used as a reaction GIF, especially this one that has the content awareness scale on it.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • There are many in the fandom who view Dani as a feminist icon for managing to best Christian and his toxic friends in the end and find the ending particularly cathartic in the process... though often ignoring the fact the cult took an equal if not much more so opportunity in gaslighting and manipulating her as her American friends for their own evil ends, along with the highly contentious assertion that Christian being a terrible boyfriend in any way morally justified his killing and all the collateral human damage in the process... as well as the heavy implication she's the one facing a Fate Worse than Death in the end with the implied permanent Sanity Slippage.
    • It's not uncommon to see the viewpoint (most clearly espoused in Wisecrack's "Deep or Dumb?" video on the film) that the Hårga are meant to be the good guys — a warm, compassionate, supportive community who "save" Dani and give her everything her life was lacking before, and a stark contrast to the outside modern world that is shallow, cold, abusive, alienating, and disrespectful of other cultures, as embodied by Christian and his companions. Of course, this mindset completely ignores all the gaslighting, rape, murdering and human sacrificing they get up to. And the heavy implications that they are neo-Nazis (at least partly confirmed by Word of God, as Ari Aster said "all of the ‘outsiders’[...] recruited for mating are purposely white. [Josh is] thrown away in a way that the other members of the main cast are not [...] because these people have no further use for him.") taking advantage of her personal struggles and pretending to be warm and compassionate to indoctrinate her at a vulnerable time in her life... exactly like real cults do.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Dani's sister arguably crosses it when she takes both their parents with her in a murder-suicide, condemning Dani to her broken state.
    • The cult crosses it with their unnecessary murders of Connie and Simon. Even if you could justify the fates of Christian and Josh with some warped sense of morality, there was absolutely no reason for them to target the innocent and give them such horrifying deaths.
    • Dani crosses it by the end by choosing Christian to be burned to death for "cheating" (despite that not ultimately being the case) and perhaps his many previous failures as a boyfriend... though whether she was making it through her own, sane free will will forever be up to debate.
  • Narm:
    • Dani's wailing during the Downer Beginning of the movie may be heart-felt, but she can also sound too silly to take seriously.
    • Like with Hereditary, once the cults go over-the-top it becomes unintentionally funny (best examples being the sex scene - where a woman even helps with the thrusts! - and the "shared wails").
    • Christian being stuffed in a dead bear sounds creepy on paper, but the end result can give off the feeling that he's in a giant teddy bear, with his spaced, wide-eyed expression not helping matters.
    • Dani, at the end, is crowned May Queen and dressed in a flowery dress. During some parts of the final scene, she looks like a slug.
    • For some, the screaming in the movie can border on ridiculous.
  • Nausea Fuel: Hopefully, no one is eating while watching this film.
    • The ritual suicide with the elder couple's faces completely destroyed, with the old man's leg split in half and his face then caved in with a gigantic hammer.
    • Christian unknowingly eating Maja's pubic hair and drinking her menstrual blood.
    • Simon getting the blood eagle treatment — even worse is that he is barely alive.
    • Christian being raped by Maja, surrounded by nude women, some of whom are elderly; plus, while Maja may be sixteen, which is the legal age of consent in Sweden, it's still a teenager raping a man in his late twenties.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Due to how toxic Christian and his friends are, it becomes increasingly easy for some viewers to root for the Hårga in tormenting them and be on board in the finale when Dani orders for his execution at the end.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The ättestupa ritual, which has attained similar notoriety to the car accident in Hereditary.
    • Dani screaming and howling along with the other girls for "emotional support" after witnessing Christian's infidelity.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • The film feels like both this and a Spiritual Antithesis to Hereditary, Ari Aster's previous film.
      • Both films focus on pagan occultism grooming a young person into membership, with ambiguous final results, and both feature the raw dissolution of relationships as a major theme. The two also feature iconographic similarities in the cults, like triangles and sun rays, and both films feature ideas of predestination dooming their casts.
      • Midsommar has prominent contrasts as well. Hereditary didn't fully prove that supernatural forces were real in-story until late in the film, while Midsommar plays with the supernatural while the film ultimately turns out not to feature it at all. In Hereditary, the cult target is male, broken by repeated trauma and lack of support, and forced into his role, while in Midsommar, the target is female and manipulated into joining through feigned love and support responding to her traumas. Hereditary's ending is played as a grim conclusion to a drawn-out tragedy, while Midsommar's is framed as a terrible kind of triumph.
    • The film also draws several parallels to The Wicker Man (1973).
  • Squick: Hoo boy.
    • Dani's sister's suicide by way of a car exhaust hose taped to her mouth is shown unflinchingly and without any romanticizing.
    • The old man's broken legs when the ättestupa ritual goes wrong.
    • The cult's "oracles" are deliberately inbred, and romantic couplings between cousins are permitted on occasion.
    • As part of a "love spell," Maja bakes her pubic hair into a meat pie prepared just for Christian, and it's implied his drink has been infused with her menstrual blood.
    • The fertility ritual, in which a very drugged Christian is raped by Maja while surrounded by the cult's overly familiar and quite naked female members.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Christian's first reaction that Josh disobeyed the Hårga's orders is to throw him under the bus and insist that he doesn't have any association with him. This is meant to cement him as a selfish, Dirty Coward who shows no concerns for the well-being of his friends. That being said, if you're the guest and one of your friends has angered the host, you too would not want to associate with that friend.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some complaints were that Dani's family drama (and her reaction to their deaths) wasn't fleshed out well enough in order to focus almost entirely on her relationship with Christian and his friends. Some feel focusing on the former would've given Dani a much more sympathetic and satisfying arc rather than the much more divisive character she ends up becoming.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A cinematic world where almost everybody is a complete jerkass or Affably Evil and the few sympathetic characters are either killed, tortured or end up turning over to the dark side has, along with the film's heavy doses of shock horror, been quite the turn off to a not-insignificant portion of the film's audience.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The very subtle CGI used to warp foliage, background objects and occasionally even characters' faces when Dani and the others are under the influence of hallucinogens. Aster explained in a New York Times interview how the distortions actually increase with Dani's rising panic.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Vulture film critic Angelica Jade Bastién lambasted the film for a wide range of questionable statements she thought the film was making, particularly in the ending, which she saw as supporting Dani's murder of her boyfriend. Audience members who like the death cult tend to make the same interpretation of the ending as being didactic.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: This has been a common criticism of the film in Sweden. There are several references to Sweden's liberal immigration system, but many Swedes were less than impressed with Aster's nudge nudge, wink wink moralizing over how supposedly racist and insular they are. Not only is it seen as very hypocritical for an American to make such a criticism, but compared with the other stereotypes in the movie and America's and Sweden's traditionally strained relationship, it's no surprise that the movie hasn't gone over well there.

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