Beyond the Final Girl: Midsommar, Family and the Final Girl Smile

Much like his unsettling debut Hereditary, Ari Aster’s follow-up is a film concerned with family and the emotional ties we create with others. Midsommar opens on a family tragedy, a deeply upsetting horror that immediately introduces the turmoil our protagonist will suffer. Now that her blood-related family has been taken from Dani (Florence Pugh), the logical next step is to find her own family; creating strong bonds with friends, peers, or romantic partners who are available for emotional support. However, Dani finds herself stifled and her feelings repressed when around her emotionally unavailable boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his equally immature and selfish friends, Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter). The only person in her new ‘family’ that shows genuine care for Dani is the boys’ Swedish friend Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who takes the group to his home community of the Hårga, in Hålsingland, Sweden, for their traditional midsummer celebration. In this new community, Dani begins to question her relationship and finds a place for the depth of her emotions—while Aster creates one of the most subversive portrayals of a female horror protagonist in recent years.

Midsommar’s most affecting sequence is arguably its opening one, as we watch the aftermath of Dani’s troubled sister deciding to kill herself and their parents with carbon monoxide. When we see Dani’s laptop screen filled with emails trying to contact her sister, a reply from Christian can be seen in the sidebar, simply reading: “sure, might be late”. While we don’t know what this is in reply to, we immediately understand that Dani is giving more than she receives in this relationship, something which is quickly confirmed as she calls Christian to discuss her concerns and, after reluctantly asking about her with a barely-hidden sigh, gaslights Dani into believing that her sister’s bipolar disorder is somehow Dani’s fault. In a restaurant, Josh and Mark try to make Christian see that his relationship needs to come to an end, before Dani rings again, which Mark calls “abuse”. While Christian was already continuing with an unfulfilling relationship out of laziness, as Dani wails down the phone—unable to communicate her trauma another way—it becomes clear that leaving now is even less of an option.

As Dani tries to recover from losing her family, she attempts to connect with the only people she has left. Several painfully awkward scenes show the guys barely hiding their obvious dislike for Dani and discomfort with her presence, as she desperately tries to fit into their unwelcoming group. Dani’s situation is defined by disconnect—between her and Christian, and especially her and his friends. Christian’s emotional immaturity stops him from taking responsibility for his passivity as a partner, with an argument about the Sweden trip resulting in Dani apologizing to him when he threatens to leave her house. Her need to please him by remaining just as passive as he is—never getting upset or angry with him, not showing any display of emotions—forces Dani to repress her trauma and literally walk away when she feels it coming to the surface. Christian’s inability to admit to himself and Dani that he wants to end their relationship, alongside his emotional incapacity, pushes Dani even further into an isolation which swallows her whole, and hangs over her as she arrives with her new ‘family’ to Hålsingland. As Savina Petkova states, “Dani’s overpowering alienation prevents her from verbalising both the traumatic aftermath of the incident and her need for intimacy”; Aster heightens this alienation as we follow Dani walking away from her friends while she trips on hallucinogens, and after witnessing two senicides during the shocking Ättestupa rituals.

On their second day with the community, Dani, Christian, Josh and Pelle watch as two of the elders take part in a long-held tradition; when they reach what they see as the natural end of their lives, at 72, they must jump to their deaths from atop a cliff, observed by the rest of the Hårga. As Dani processes what she has just witnessed after the female elder falls to her death, the camera stays with her face and reaction, isolating her unsteady breathing and muffling the sounds of Simon (Archie Madekwe) and Connie (Ellora Torchia)—two other ‘outsiders’ to the Hårga brought by Pelle’s brother—reacting angrily to the gruesome deaths. While Dani appears disturbed by the ritual, as the female elder stands at the edge of the cliff moments before her death, she seems to look directly into Dani’s eyes and holds her stare. Throughout the film, Dani’s connection to the Hårga people is stronger than any of the ‘outsiders’ she came with; as another elder explains that the community prefers to end their lives on their own terms rather than in pain or shame in old age, she shares a look with Dani, who seems to be reckoning with her own loss through the ritual. Later, though she worries about the fact that Simon has left without Connie, she soon accepts an offer to cook with the Hårga women and begins to bond with them. Josh, Christian and Mark all show disrespect for the traditions held dear by the Hårga, whether it’s Mark peeing on an ancestral tree, or Josh taking pictures after specifically being told not to. Christian’s spineless passivity sees him stealing Josh’s thesis idea as it becomes clear that he, too, is in Sweden for personal gain, only to claim that he has no loyalty or connection to Josh when a sacred text goes missing. While her friends see what they can glean from the Hårga for the purposes of their work, Dani is the only one truly open to this new way of life and what it can give her. Where she has become accustomed to hiding her emotions around her friendship group, in this newfound community, she finds comfort in the catharsis of sharing trauma and experiencing empathy from those around her.

After being crowned the Hårga’s new May Queen in a psychedelic dance ritual that sees her celebrated and respected by the community, Dani hears noises coming from another building and, though she is told not to, walks up to the door. Unlike Christian, who blindly follows the elders’ orders and engages in a mating ritual with Maja (Isabelle Grill), Dani follows her instincts and defies the group’s suggestion, and her new status as May Queen grants her respect from the other women to do so. When she sees Christian cheating on her, she does what we’ve seen her do each time her emotions rise to the surface, and attempts to be alone without being a “burden” to others; however, in this community, pain is felt by everyone. The women follow her, hold her, and wail as she does. As Caitlin Kennedy writes, “the women of the cult cry out as if her anguish is their own”—in this new family, feelings of both joy and trauma are experienced as a group, with no-one feeling shame over their emotions. During the opening sequence, we hear Dani’s traumatic screams after her family’s death, as Christian hesitantly walks towards her house, looking terrified at the enormity of pain he is about to witness. He holds her silently as she grieves, but he can’t empathize. Dani finds acceptance for the first time in this newfound community, possibly because she was always meant to be there, as it’s heavily suggested throughout that Pelle brought her to the Hårga with the intention of her staying in Hålsingland.

Throughout the first half of the film, though the audience can clearly see how toxic Christian’s subtly manipulative behaviour is, Dani repeatedly justifies his incompetence in their relationship; when he forgets her birthday, she defends him to Pelle, saying “I forgot to remind him, it’s not his fault”. But through spending time in a community that allows her to be her true self, Dani begins to see Christian for what he is. When Christian is discussing Simon seemingly having left without Connie and suggests “I’m sure it was a miscommunication”—miscommunication, ironically, being one of his relationship’s most damning issues—Dani claims “I could see you possibly doing that”. This is the first time we’ve seen Dani react in an honest or confrontational way to Christian’s emotional unavailability; she feels empowered to tell him how she feels without worrying about the consequence, because she no longer feels she needs to desperately cling onto him. As with protagonist and “Final Girl” Grace (Samara Weaving) in Ready or Not, Dani has lost her real family, and has also been trying as hard as possible to fit into her surrogate one. While her isolation causes her to attach herself more strongly to this family, it also means she has nothing to lose when she finally rejects them. This might be why Midsommar’s chilling ending feels conflictingly cathartic. After being crowned the May Queen and seeing Christian cheat on her, Dani—covered in an enormous cape of flowers—realizes that almost everyone she arrived with to Sweden has been killed, before being given the choice to sacrifice the life of either Christian or a member of the Hårga. Arguments around whether Christian ‘deserved’ his fate became so debated on the internet that the film’s distributor, A24, offered free couples therapy. But our attachment to Dani as our protagonist, and arguably the only empathetic character available to relate to, complicates our feelings towards the film’s last few moments, which see Dani with a smile on her face as Christian burns to death.

While my argument here has revolved around the idea of the Hårga acting as Dani’s newfound family, it’s important to note that Pelle, despite being positioned as seemingly the opposite of Christian’s toxic traits, also shows disturbingly predatory behaviour. The suggestion that Pelle orchestrated the Sweden trip in order for Dani to become integrated into the Hårga is all but confirmed when, after telling someone at a party that his friends are coming to visit his home, he looks directly at Dani to gauge her reaction. He may have known that she would fit into his community, but he also most likely knew of all the deaths she would witness, including that of her boyfriend. Pelle tells her that he was “most excited for [her] to come”, brings up her family tragedy in order to offer comfort, and questions how supportive her relationship is. After she is crowned May Queen, he kisses her without her consent, and though his emotional maturity seems to offer a more fulfilling alternative to Christian’s unavailability, he often makes Dani uncomfortable. If Dani does stay in Hålsingland with Pelle and his family, is she simply trading in one unhealthy relationship for another? While she finds comfort and understanding in the female members of the community, her acceptance into the Hårga is still predicated on the fact that Pelle orchestrated her arrival and integration into the violent group, making her new life possibly just as harmful as her previous one.

However, another way in which Aster subverts our expectations of women in horror is through the treatment of Christian. In comparison to the classic image of a scantily-clad woman consistently sexualized and tortured throughout the film—think the relentless terror Sally Hardesty suffers in 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—it is Christian that goes through humiliation, coercion and eventually death. As Dani simultaneously takes part in the May Queen dance and is crowned, Christian is pushed (despite his protests) into drinking a mixture which he is told will ‘break down his defences’, before being led away by Maja to engage in the impregnation ritual. As prophesied by The Take, Christian’s “defining sin is passivity[…] he hurts others through inactivity”. While Dani is open to the drinks she’s offered and the rituals she’s required to partake in, Christian is clearly uncomfortable, but still does what’s asked of him and cheats on Dani. Afterwards, it’s Christian who stumbles around naked, scared and confused, a direct contrast to the objectifying tropes of women in horror: as Reynor told me in an interview for Man About Town, the aim of this “subversion of misogyny” was to flip the entrenched stereotype, of horror films wherein “you could just see where there was no consideration for the modesty, or for the comfort of these girls that were having to do these scenes”, on its head. The Take also suggests that Christian’s literal paralysing at the hands of the Hårga, as they give him drugs which immobilise his body and voice, is a direct justification for his passive behaviour. With Dani being the only living member of the group that came to Sweden completely unaware of their violent fates, and her position as our way into the community, we connect to her more than any other character. So when we see her distressed expression slowly transform into a wry smile as she watches Christian die, we must reckon with our complicity in this chilling act.

Like Us’s Adelaide, The Invisible Man’s Cecilia, The Witch’s Thomasin and Ready or Not’s Grace, Dani is joyful in her last moments on screen, finally released from her repression and taking control of her situation. Where Sally Hardesty maniacally laughed in Texas’s final shot, supposedly driven to insanity through the torture she’s endured, Dani placidly smiles, because like these other modern Final Girls, she knows she can’t return to what came before; and nor does she want to. While her decisions have ultimately left her unable to leave this new community, despite their violence and Pelle’s questionable behaviour, she appears at peace in the knowledge that she has found her people. Her emotions are no longer ridiculed, and instead of burying them—a practice which Midsommar frames as negative through a somewhat cautionary tale—they are celebrated, respected. Writing on the smiles seen on the faces of several Final Girls in recent years, Annie Lord claims that “Women can be bad in horror, but unfortunately, they still have to be raped, brutalised and maimed first”. While the Final Girl may still undergo disproportionate amounts of trauma in relation to the male characters, their characterization has seemingly evolved past the need for their pain to be their entire personality. Midsommar’s Dani knowingly smiles with a triumphant satisfaction, and while we might feel conflicted as to why, we smile along with her.