This is a custom special request for my sister, and I think there are actually a lot of you who just want to know about the most disturbing parts of this one. I’m anti-spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet… don’t read this. If you maybe want to see the movie but are afraid of how fucked up it gets, maybe reading this will quell your fears and you’ll know what to expect. So read this and then go buy your ticket.  It’s more of an intelligently written horrific drama, but if you insist… Carry on…

I was initially going to try to rank these, but that’s too hard. It’s all fucked up and for different reasons. So here’s the “WHAT. THE. FUCKKK.” shit that followed me home from the theater and will stay with me for the duration of my life. Your list might be different. Please, let me know if it is. So, in no particular order, here we go-

 

Picture this – a frolicking rousing round of skin the fool (a children’s game with a charming name), in an idyllic Swedish meadow, beneath the summer sun… what the fuck time of day? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Could be midnight, could be noon, in this land of sunshine and flower crowns, the light screams perpetual noon. The horniest of the bunch in your horny, rag tag group of friends follows a girl off to who knows where. We don’t see him for awhile. When we do… he looks a little… off. It’s late, and it’s from a distance and you’re sneaking around in a weird building you’re not allowed to be in so maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you. It’s him… but it’s not him. Oh wait… it’s somebody wearing a fucking skinsuit of your buddy. His face has been skinned off and is being worn by another, a la Leatherface. This shit will haunt my nightmares for the next several decades I’m sure.

 

Pube pie. Yeah, it’s exactly what it sounds like. But according to the tapestry that gave us this sweet little love spell, it might actually be worse than pube pie. “What the hell is worse than pube pie!?” I hear your screaming at me across the cyber seas. Well… according to the tapestry, the recipe for love is this… get your notebooks ready, kids. You’re also gonna need some scissors, a mug and whatever ingredients go into making a regular pie.

Step one: Sit on a chair, place a mug on the floor. Pants must be off. You can leave your socks on if you want, it doesn’t really matter.

Step two: Position your junk over the mug and get your scissors ready. I think you know what to do next. But if you don’t… you’re gonna need to snip snip some pubes into that catch all mug ready and waiting on the floor. Aim might take some practice.

Step three: You’ve also gotta bleed into the mug. And far as I can tell it’s menstrual blood, so maybe I should have specified this spell is time sensitive and is for the ladies only.

Step four: Pour that shit into the pie you’re making. I don’t think the type of pie matters. This was not specified, but it was served as an entree so I imagined it to be a savory pie.

Step five: Serve that pubey pie to your beloved. Pro tip: Works best if the hair clippings are cut small enough so your beloved does not suspect they are in fact consuming a pube pie and stop eating all together.

Step six: You’r in love, yay! Cue the heart eyes.

 

Ritualistic sacrificial suicide. Did you see Hereditary? If you did… two words… telephone pole. That shit was traumatic. I think this shit is worse. Faces like melons. Stomach churning graphics to say the least. Hold on…. let me backtrack a bit. One melon head. The second does not let us off as easily as the first. The first was instant and sickening. Followed by… A broken leg at an ungodly angle, and an intact head. A suicide attempt gone awry. Not to fret, here’s the mallet with the assist. Ok, now we’ve got two melon heads. And that won’t be the last of them. These two will periodically and without any warning whatsoever, pop their way back onto the screen and into your nightmares. Sprinkled in like a little extra seasoning whenever your stomach starts to settle from the spectacle. I can see it so clearly as I type this that my stomach is burning again with acidic gore.

 

Ceremonial sex. A drug induced ritualistic sex ceremony. The bed of flowers is really nice- idyllic, really. With the right song and the right partner, it would basically be a pretty dreamy first time. But add in a slew of naked onlookers and a drug induced hypnotic stupor and the vibe changes a bit. The insemination scene of Rosemary’s Baby has always haunted me. This is similar, (Aster is admittedly heavily influenced by Ira Levin), but the bystanders are very interactive. And it isn’t done in a dreamlike state. It’s lucid, present, aware. Breath is a big thing in this movie, so you’ve got these naked ladies attending to this coupling with rhythmic synchronized breathing, and being really all up in the mix. Like, “Hi, I know I’m a third party, but my face is now a centimeter from yours” and “Hello, allow me to place my hands upon your buttocks to assist with the thrust. Really get in there!”. It’s weird and horrific but Ari Aster is so brilliant at allowing the characters to be aware of the absurdity of their situations that there are intentional laughs that ease the tension of all the wild weirdness I just described.

Dead body reveals. Slasher flicks have excellent kill scenes. And the further you go into a franchise, the more insane the kills get as they come up with new ways to off the victims. Midsommar employs a ton of off-screen violence, but the body reveals are pretty disturbing. Most involve some sort of nature mashup. Flowers in the eyes, branches coming out of the head like some crazy art installation, etc.

Not disturbing but maybe file under interesting observation/miscellaneous/noteworthy. At a certain point, so many things look like a vagina. Maybe it’s just me. Flowers are breathing, everything is alive, but in a very vaginal-like manner.

Lots of the horror and disturbing things come from the pacing, the theme and the tone of the film. It’s worth a watch and probably won’t be too scary or over the top if you’re not a horror fan, because it’s not a horror film per se. It’s also not a shock ’em schlock piece. It’s more of a psychological thriller set against a backdrop of horror that explores some really cool deeper themes. These are just a few of the most visually disturbing things I could relay to you. Pleasant dreams.