Last summer, director Ari Aster scared the pants off the Sundance midnight crowd with his feature debut Hereditary, a horror film about grief, families, and ritual. The film would become a horror hit for the masses, though Aster’s peculiar stylings didn’t work for all. But that’s exactly what makes us so excited for his next horror film, Midsommar; we can’t wait to see how audiences react to another cerebral, grief-stained horror fable, this one set in broad daylight.
The first trailer for the film offered a little bit of insight into what Midsommar might be about, but in this new one, the pieces come together even more. This looks like a summer festival straight out of our nightmares. Only instead of being afraid of the dark, our characters can’t escape the Scandinavian summer light.
Here’s the official description for Midsommar:
Dani and Christian are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that render the pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing. From the visionary mind of Ari Aster comes a dread-soaked cinematic fairytale where a world of darkness unfolds in broad daylight.
The film stars Florence Pugh as Dani and Jack Renor as Christian, with The Good Place‘s William Jackson Harper and Black Mirror‘s Will Poulter filling out the supporting roles. From the looks of things, this one could be set in similar occult world to Hereditary, given the symbols, incantations, and rituals on display in this trailer.
Whatever’s going on in Midsommar, we can’t wait to find out when the film lands in theaters on July 3.
Images: A24
