Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) is one of the most contentious horror movies of recent years, with people either loving or hating it. I’ve never met anyone who said it was just okay. Personally, I’m on the loving side. I see it as a disturbing character study of Dani, a young woman who experiences extreme trauma. This article, with spoilers galore, will discuss Dani’s development, particularly in the director’s cut.
The inciting incident of Midsommar comes in the first few minutes. Dani’s sister Terri has sent an ominous email ending with “goodbye” just before killing herself and their parents via carbon monoxide poisoning. Because of Terri’s bipolar diagnosis, Dani’s boyfriend Christian wants to write off this last email as another “obvious ploy for attention.” Although Dani is panicking, saying that this message “seems different” from the others, Christian tiredly gaslights her into disregarding the serious nature of it. He sees Dani as hysterical and needy. Dani, meanwhile, is just trying to care for her sister in a difficult time. Christian writes off Terri as irrational and Dani as enabling.
Of course, as we soon learn, the email was not seeking attention but was truly a farewell. Christian’s disregard for the sisters’ needs shows that his empathy is lacking. We learn that he’s wanted to break up with Dani for over a year, but he hesitated because he might want her back. It’s clear, however, that he doesn’t love or even care for her anymore. Dani expresses to a nameless friend her worries of leaning on him too much, of beingtoo much. Her friend says the point of a relationship is to lean on each other, and wouldn’t Dani be there for Christian if he needed support? Dani struggles, as so many women do, with the desire to not appear needy and as a chore. Women, like all living beings, do have needs. Women, like all humans, are social creatures who need support from time to time. Dani fills space in her boyfriend’s life. She is not a background figure or a toy, despite how much he wants her to be. Granted, by the time the movie starts, there’s really no good opportunity for Christian to end the relationship. Even so, he doesn’t deserve to die.
Yet his death at the end is a victory for Dani. She has developed from a passive to a functional character in her own story. She surveys the turmoil and fire, smiles, and thinks to herself, “I did this.” Some audience members may smile with her, like I did. Not only has she become an active player, but the one who restrained her will never have power again. She “purged the wickedness,” which is also what a villager says before setting the temple ablaze. She is no longer complicit and beaten down. How much more can we ask for than to be seen and to be an active participant in life?
Let’s look more into her development. When Dani finds out about Christian and his friends’ upcoming trip to Sweden and asks him about it, he gaslights her again. She remains calm as she confronts him, but his insistence that he should leave so she can cool down leads her to apologize profusely. But Dani has nothing to apologize for. She didn’t verbally or physically attack and she didn’t even cry, though her upset is clear and valid. At this point, she is a passive player in her own life.
Dani first genuinely smiles when she speaks to Pelle about his Swedish home. We glimpse who she could be when she doesn’t feel herself a burden. Sweden and Pelle provide the opportunity for her to feel belonging. In Sweden, when Dani has a panic attack, Christian is nowhere to be seen but Pelle is there to comfort her. He asserts that she deserves a family, to be “held,” to have a home. Christian gives her none of that. This is an early turning point for our protagonist, one of the first instances when she sees potential for healing.
One common criticism of Midsommar, especially the director’s cut, is the amiable framing of the Swedish cult. Dani is undoubtedly indoctrinated into the cult at a time when she most needs support. On the way to Pelle’s home of Harga, Christian’s friend Josh reads a book about Nazi symbols because the village uses such a runic alphabet. Dani makes light of this and says, “See that, Pelle? You’ve managed to brainwash all of your friends.” Little does she know how true this is. Pelle jokes that Christian was brainwashed already, which we can deduce from his enthusiastic participation with the cult from the beginning.
Furthering the Nazi agenda are the allusions to eugenics, such as when another friend, Mark, asks what makes Swedish women so hot and gets a vague answer about the gene pool. He doesn’t care much about how that gene pool is cultivated because he is shallow and already brainwashed. Incest is also discussed in Harga, when we learn that outsiders are occasionally brought in to avoid such coupling.
It is exceedingly important that Dani becomes the May Queen. She is an outsider, alone in the world, but once she starts dancing, she loses herself in giggles, smiles, and community. The fact that the May Queen is not a Harga native shows how easily a vulnerable person can be taken in. Studies have shown time and time again that people who feel isolated and weak are often picked up by cults. Look at Germany when Hitler came to power or, in a more recent case, incels and the far right in the U.S.
Dani’s grin at the end displays her reclaimed power. She is now healing from trauma through community. The audience members who smile with her may be in need of some healing themselves. As a person who experienced trauma and is still recovering myself, I felt Dani’s relief in the final shot. In the beginning, she bears the crushing weight of survivor’s guilt. By the end, she is able to smile not because she’s polite or high, as happens before, but because she wants to. The desire and ability to smile probably seem like trivial matters to those who haven’t experienced trauma or neurodivergence. When a person is in the depths of depression, trauma, or any significantly disruptive event, smiling can be a difficult task. Wanting to express a positive emotion is a huge feat, and I am so glad that Dani reaches that point with us.
Although Dani finds her power in a deeply problematic collective, the simple fact is that she develops from passive and alone to an active figure in a loving community. That community just so happens to be a eugenicist murder cult.