Is Midsommar scary? Ari Aster calls it a breakup movie; the BBFC gave it an 18

Midsommar contains almost no darkness and almost no jump scares, which is the first thing to know before deciding whether it will frighten you. What it does instead tends to land days later.

What kind of scary it is

The film runs on dread rather than shock. The Swedish midsummer sun barely sets, the camera keeps its distance, and the threat arrives as hospitality — meals, flower crowns, and people smiling at you in a language you don't speak. There's no monster, no darkened corridor, and very little in the way of the sudden noise horror usually relies on. Viewers who need a jolt to register fear often walk out unmoved. Viewers who are unsettled by social pressure, isolation, and the feeling of being managed tend to find it hard to shake.

Aster has been consistent about what he was making. He wrote the script after a breakup, ran a couples-counselling session with Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor in character before shooting, and has described the film to Vox as an opera in structure.

"It's not the end of the world, but in a way it is," he told VICE in 2019 of the breakup that fed the script.

What the classifiers flagged

The BBFC handed Midsommar an 18 on 26 June 2019 — a rating British distributors usually work hard to avoid — with the consumer advice reading simply "strong gory images". The board's longer notes cite sustained strong language, hallucinogenic drug use, an extended sex scene, a murder-suicide sequence in the prologue, and a cliff-top ritual with graphic injury detail. UK cinema prints ran 147 minutes.

In the United States the MPAA settled on an R for disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use, and language. Getting there took work: Aster's early assembly came back with an NC-17, and A24 asked him to cut his near-three-hour version down to something a multiplex would book.

The specific scenes people flinch at:

Read more: Midsommar ending explained: Ari Aster has said what Dani's final smile means to him

• The prologue, which is over before anyone reaches Sweden and sets the emotional terms for everything after.
• The cliff-top ceremony roughly 50 minutes in, which is where most first-time viewers realise the holiday isn't one.
• A ritual with the commune's women in attendance, deeply uncomfortable and played without music.
• The drug sequences, in which grass and faces breathe at the edges of the frame.

The numbers, and the argument

A24 opened the film on 2,700 screens on 3 July 2019. It took $3.02 million on its first day, $10.9 million across the five-day debut, and around $48.5 million worldwide from a budget of roughly $9 million. Critics were fond of it — 83% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time. Opening-weekend audiences graded it C+ on CinemaScore, which is poor by the usual standards but a clear improvement on the D+ they gave Hereditary the year before.

Aster's reaction to that gap was not defensive. He has said it amuses him that A24 pushes films like this into wide release, because people will walk into them who never would have chosen them.

Which cut to watch

Two versions exist. The theatrical cut runs 147 minutes. The director's cut runs 171 and premiered at Film at Lincoln Center's Scary Movies festival on 17 August 2019, six weeks after release. The extra 24 minutes add a night-time ritual that explains more of the commune's beliefs, and a long argument between Dani and Christian that makes the relationship considerably uglier.

The longer version isn't gorier. It's a harder watch for different reasons, which rather proves Aster's point about what the film is. A24's collector's edition of that cut ships with a 62-page booklet carrying a foreword by Martin Scorsese — an unusual credential for a film about a nine-day flower festival.

Earlier we wrote: What happens at the end of A Quiet Place Part II? The ending, and how Part III picks it up in 2027