Midsommar--Ending Explained with spoilers!

Plot Summary: A couple visits a rural town during the festival, unaware they are in the presence of a pagan cult. 

The world can be a cruel place, and sometimes, all you want is to have someone stand up for you, and for you to belong to that person.

In a way, everyone wants someone or the other to be there for them.

But what happens when unavoidable circumstances cause a distance. It's obvious, the interest is gone, and suddenly it seems like you are with someone just because you don't want to be alone. Not because you need them anymore.

The interesting part of Midsommar wasn't the story as much as it was the lead characters.

MIDSOMMAR Movie Plot 

Dani is broken, traumatized after her sister kills not only herself but their parents as well.

Christian, her boyfriend, seems to find Dani's darkness attractive. He is getting impatient with her though and his friends want him to dump her. However, he not only keeps his head down but also apologizes to her over and over so that she doesn't prolong the argument and leave him.

And then he goes ahead and invites her to a trip to Sweden he was talking about with his friends.

Throughout it all, Dani knows Christian doesn’t love her anymore and wants to leave.

She knows he has a roving eye, and at times even gives him a stern look, but he is oblivious to it all.

The shocks come when the group reaches Sweden and meet the people of a pagan cult. While one of the friends fondly addresses them as friendly, it becomes obvious soon that there is something wrong.

A normal feast turns out to be a ritual. The elderly are respected, then thrown off a cliff until their faces are smashed on the ceremonial rock below. And if by any chance they survive, a small group approaches with a long hammer to smash their faces.

At this point, I wanted to turn off the movie. The smashed faces looked grotesque, and it looked too fake. But the reason wasn’t the bad make-up or tacky modelling; it was the way the scene was executed. It was, by all means, shocking. 

The callous reaction of some of the spectators, the utter indifference displayed by others, the way the other tourists freaked out, and Dani unable to believe she was witnessing another suicide after her sister’s, all of this culminated in a stomach-churning scene.

I did want to turn it off because now it’s only going to get worse right?

But I continued, watching not as an involved viewer but as an analyst. It seemed safer to withdraw emotionally from that movie.

The movie progresses and we see Christian deciding to base his anthropology thesis on the people as does another one of his friends. They get into a fight but simmer down when it is decided that they both will work on it together.

They work on it separately, questioning the elders and learning about their culture.

Dani wants to leave but is convinced by one of Christian’s friends to stay and acclimate and see the people as her new family.

She tries to and finds a tapestry with drawings of a girl using pubic hair and menstrual blood to get a man to fall in love with her.

Turns out, a girl who has just matured is seeking a mating partner and has chosen Christian.

So even though Dani knew about the “love spell”, and can see the telltale signs of pubic hair being found in Christian’s food or the way his juice is darker in shade compared to the others, she remains quiet.

How is it that Christian didn’t notice his drink was a different shade than the others?

Dani on the other hand gets weird images when she voluntarily drinks drugged teas. She seems her hands and feet growing grass. When she awakes from her psychedelic trips, she notices the other outsiders disappearing and the locals coming up with ill-conceived stories about where they went.

It is when Christian’s thesis partner disappears, and Christian tells the elders that they should basically punish him, that Dani realizes her boyfriend is loyal to no one.

MIDSOMMAR Ending Explained. Does Dani get her happy ending?

Where are Christian’s friends disappearing off to?

They are being murdered.

While one of them has his head smashed in, the other is skinned and a local wears it on his body to pretend to be him. Why? Because that friend peed on a sacred, ancestral tree.

Dani is made to enter the May Queen competition and wins. Christian is given a drugged tea which he takes voluntarily. He is told he must mate with a girl and he agrees to that too.

While Dani is taken around to the fields. Christian is coerced into mating with the girl in a weird ritual that freaks him out. Dani returns and witnesses this and her heart is broken.

After it is over, Christian runs away and finds the remains of his friends.

Before he can do anything else, he is drugged once again.

He awakens to find a woman over him telling him that he cannot move or speak.

Dani is made to decide who will be offered as a sacrifice.

In the next scene, a bear is skinned and Christian is made to wear the suit.

He is deemed a traitor by all and along with his friends, placed inside the yellow, triangular building and burned.

Dani is shown smiling while the others cry and laugh.

Was Dani smiling because she wanted to punish Christian? Or was it because she was liberated from a relationship that wasn’t real anymore and she had found a new family who understood her pain?

Or perhaps, Dani gave in to her PTSD and can’t tell right from wrong anymore. She finally found a safe place where it was okay to give in to her madness and forget about the pain she was living in.

Watch this movie if you have a strong stomach and think The Wicker Man was so good you want to see more movies like that.

Scare scale: 3/5