48 Fun Facts About Midsommar

Midsommar's horror unfolds almost entirely in what?

Bright daylight: the story unfolds under Sweden's midnight sun, an inversion of horror's usual darkness shot by Pawel Pogorzelski, who also filmed the director's debut.

Who plays Dani, the grieving student at the centre of Midsommar?

Florence Pugh, who calls herself 'not a big crier', credited the actresses playing the commune's women with making Dani's breakdown scene possible.

Who plays Christian, Dani's increasingly distant boyfriend?

Jack Reynor, raised in Ireland, pushed for as much full-frontal nudity as possible in the mating ritual, saying he wanted to embrace Christian's humiliation.

Christian and Josh are graduate students in which discipline?

Anthropology: Josh is writing his thesis on midsummer customs, and Christian's decision to write his own on the commune, poaching the topic, fuels their falling-out.

Which personal date of Dani's does Christian forget during the trip?

Her birthday: Christian forgets it until prompted, while their host marks it with a hand-drawn portrait of Dani; the slight deepens the rift the film is built on.

How often does the Hårga's great midsummer festival take place?

Once every 90 years: the visitors are told the commune's great midsummer celebration comes round only once in 90 years, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Josh's thesis on midsummer customs.

How many days does the Hårga's midsummer festival last in Midsommar?

Nine: the nine-day feast ends with nine human sacrifices, four outsiders, four from the commune and a ninth chosen by Dani.

Which Swedish friend invites the American students to his ancestral commune?

Pelle, raised in the commune after his parents died in a fire, tells Dani that it became his new family; he is the one who invites the group.

How does Dani's sister Terri kill herself and their parents at the start of Midsommar?

Carbon monoxide poisoning: Terri, who has bipolar disorder, pipes car exhaust into the house with hoses, killing their parents and herself in the murder-suicide that starts the film.

What is the name of the cliff-jumping senicide ceremony the visitors witness on their first full day?

Ättestupa: in Swedish legend the name marks cliffs where the old leapt, or were thrown, to their deaths once they could no longer support themselves; the film's elders jump willingly.

In Midsommar, the Hårga divide a person's life into four stages named after what?

Seasons: each stage of life has its season, the visitors are told, from a childhood spring to an elder's final one, a cycle the commune closes at 72 on the cliff.

What happens to the elder who survives the cliff fall?

His head is crushed with a mallet: the commune finishes him with a large wooden mallet, a prop the designers copied from one they had seen in a Stockholm museum.

Who plays Mark, the crude friend along for the trip in Midsommar?

Will Poulter plays Mark, whose skinned face later turns up worn by the commune member who bludgeons Josh.

Who plays Josh, the student writing his thesis on European midsummer festivities?

William Jackson Harper, known as Chidi in The Good Place, plays Josh, who is bludgeoned after sneaking out at night to photograph the commune's sacred book.

What is Mark doing when he inadvertently desecrates a Hårga ancestral tree?

Urinating on it: Mark relieves himself on the commune's ancestral tree without realising what it is, the offence that later gets him lured away and skinned.

What colour do the Hårga dress in for their festival in Midsommar?

White: Aster wanted the whole commune in white, handmade clothes, and each costume was embroidered with its own runic symbol to identify the wearer.

Which British couple also visit the commune as guests?

Simon and Connie, played by Archie Madekwe and Ellora Torchia, arrive as guests of another commune member; both are later killed for the final rite.

What torture method has been used on the visitor Christian finds barely alive in a barn?

The blood eagle: the victim hangs in the barn with his back opened and his lungs drawn out like wings, a torture from the Norse sagas; the commune had claimed he simply left for the station.

What title does Dani win by outlasting every other dancer in the Hårga's contest?

May Queen: Dani is crowned after outlasting every other dancer around the maypole; the contest replays a local legend of a fiddler who made the young dance until they dropped.

Which Hårga girl is Christian drugged into impregnating in the sex ritual?

Maja, played by Isabelle Grill in her first feature film, is to conceive with an outsider, the commune's guard against inbreeding; Christian is given a hallucinogenic tea before the ritual.

What colour is the triangular temple the commune burns in Midsommar's finale?

Yellow: the bright yellow temple, which the visitors are told no one may enter, is set alight with the sacrifices inside as the festival ends.

Christian is placed inside the body of which animal before the temple is set alight?

A bear: Christian, paralysed by a drug, is stitched inside a disembowelled bear carcass and burned with the other sacrifices in the temple.

Which two Hårga members volunteer to join the elders as sacrifices from within the commune?

Ingemar and Ulf step forward as the commune's own offerings and are given a drink said to take away fear and pain, a promise their screams in the burning temple disprove.

What does Dani do in Midsommar's final shot as the temple collapses?

She slowly smiles: Dani's grimace of grief gives way to a smile as the temple burns, the director framing the film as a fairy tale in which she loses one family and gains another.

Which studio released Midsommar in the United States?

A24 agreed to finance and release the film in May 2018, a month before the director's debut had even opened in cinemas.

Swedish producers first approached Aster to make which kind of horror film set among cultists?

A slasher: the producers wanted a straightforward slasher set among Swedish cultists; Aster turned it down, then took it on by building the story around a couple on the verge of breaking up.

Aster described the finished picture as 'a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of' what?

Folk horror: the full line was 'a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film', and he wrote it while going through a breakup of his own.

Although set in Sweden, most of Midsommar was shot in which country?

Hungary: the commune scenes were filmed on the outskirts of Budapest in summer 2018 because, Aster said, the production could not afford to shoot in Sweden.

Midsommar's composer Bobby Krlic is better known under which stage name?

The Haxan Cloak: Krlic's 2013 album Excavation was on repeat while the script was written, and he was hired to score the film before shooting began.

What is the name of the inbred oracle whose scribbles form the commune's scripture?

Ruben, deliberately bred from incest as the commune's oracle, produces the markings the elders interpret as holy writ; Josh dies trying to photograph the resulting book.

What do the Hårga offer the visitors on arrival in Midsommar, sending Dani into a bad trip?

Magic mushrooms: the group is handed psilocybin almost as soon as it reaches Sweden, and Dani's trip turns dark when she hallucinates her dead family.

Roughly how many silk flowers cover the gown Dani wears in Midsommar's finale?

10,000 silk flowers make up the gown; when the studio auctioned it for charity in 2020, Ariana Grande and Halsey both made public plays for it.

Midsommar's commune lies in which historical province of Sweden?

Hälsingland: the commune is placed in this northern province, whose real folk legend of a fiddler dancing villagers to death, the Hårgalåten, shapes the maypole contest.

What rating did the MPAA give Midsommar's theatrical cut?

R: after about six weeks of back-and-forth over the film's graphic nudity, the MPAA granted an R once cuts were made, sparing it an NC-17 that is seen as box-office poison.

What grade did CinemaScore audiences give Midsommar?

C+: opening-night audiences polled by CinemaScore gave Midsommar a C+, which still beat the D+ they had handed the director's debut a year earlier.

Which 1973 British film is often cited as a forerunner of Midsommar?

The Wicker Man (1973), in which Edward Woodward's policeman is lured to a pagan Hebridean island and burned alive, supplies Midsommar's template of outsiders sacrificed by a smiling community.

Midsommar's opening scenes in America are set at what time of year?

Deep winter: snow falls as Dani learns of her family's deaths, and the film then jumps months ahead to the Swedish midsummer.

What was Ari Aster's debut feature, released the year before Midsommar?

Hereditary, with Toni Collette as a grieving mother, drew a D+ from opening-night audiences yet became its studio's highest-grossing film worldwide at the time.

Which surrealist comedy-drama did Aster make after Midsommar, in 2023?

Beau Is Afraid (2023), with Joaquin Phoenix as the anxious Beau, was billed by Aster as a 'nightmare comedy' and grossed about $12 million against a $35 million budget.

What is the name of Aster's production company, co-founded with producer Lars Knudsen in 2019?

Square Peg launched on the eve of Midsommar's release and has since backed other directors' films, including Kristoffer Borgli's Dream Scenario and Robert Eggers's The Northman.

Which Swedish actor, Tadzio in 1971's Death in Venice, plays the elder Dan in Midsommar?

Björn Andrésen was hailed in headlines as 'the most beautiful boy in the world' after Death in Venice; a 2021 documentary of that name traced what the fame cost him.

In the Hårgalåten legend, what gives away the mysterious fiddler's demonic nature?

A cloven hoof: in the legend the hoof is spotted too late, and the Devil, disguised as a fiddler, keeps the young of Hårga dancing on the mountain until they drop dead.

For which other 2019 film did the actress who plays Dani earn an Oscar nomination?

Little Women: she played Amy March in Greta Gerwig's adaptation, earning a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the 2020 Oscars within months of Midsommar's release.

What is Dani's surname?

Ardor: the family answerphone announces 'the Ardor residence', and the word itself means burning passion, from the Latin ardere, to burn, apt for a story that ends at a pyre.

Which institution reportedly bought Dani's flower dress at the 2020 charity auction?

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures reportedly paid $65,000 for the dress, and the Midsommar lots together raised about $100,000 for New York firefighters and their families hit by COVID-19.

How do the Hårga women respond when Dani collapses in sobs after seeing Christian in the ritual?

They wail along with her: the women surround Dani and match every sob; Aster says she needs people who can 'not just witness her experience, but mirror it'.

During her first drug trip at the commune, what does Dani see growing out of her hand?

Grass: soon after the visitors arrive, a tripping Dani watches grass sprout through the back of her hand before panic sends her fleeing into the trees.

Where did Midsommar's director's cut have its world premiere in August 2019?

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, by then renamed Film at Lincoln Center, premiered the 171-minute cut in New York before it played US cinemas for a weekend at the end of August.