Film

Midsommar

A breakup horror movie dressed as a folk-horror fairy tale: gorgeous, sun-drenched, and utterly merciless. Florence Pugh anchors a slow, hallucinatory descent into a Swedish commune's midsummer rites, where grief gets absorbed by ritual and every smiling face hides something worse. It's patient, painterly, and genuinely upsetting — for people who like their dread in broad daylight.

TMDb rating7.1

If you liked this

Hereditary2018

Ari Aster's previous film shares Midsommar's DNA exactly: grief curdling into ritual, a family unraveling in real time, dread that builds instead of jump-scares. If you loved the craft, this is the same hand at even sharper work.

But It's bleaker and more claustrophobic — indoors, wintry, and arguably more traumatic to sit through.

Hereditary poster

The Wicker Man1973

The blueprint. An outsider wanders into a remote, pagan-friendly community whose cheerful rituals turn out to have teeth. Every sun-soaked cult movie since owes it a debt, including the one you just watched.

But Dated pacing and 1970s British eccentricity; the folk-horror punch lands but the delivery is creakier.

The Wicker Man poster

The Witch2016

Robert Eggers' isolationist nightmare builds the same slow, meticulous dread out of period detail and a family fraying at the edges of an unforgiving wilderness. Gorgeous, austere, and quietly terrifying.

But Thick period dialect and a glacial pace demand patience; nothing here is fast or flashy.

The Witch poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Wild Wild Country2018

Midsommar's cult dynamics — belonging, ritual, the seduction of surrendering the self to a group — aren't invented. This is the same psychology, unscripted and terrifyingly real.

A real Oregon cult, filmed with archival footage so vivid it barely needs dramatization — communal ecstasy, charismatic leadership, and a slow slide into paranoia and violence, all true.

But It's a six-hour documentary series, not a horror film — no jump scares, just the slower horror of watching real people surrender themselves.

Wild Wild Country poster
More like this (8)

The Ritual2017

Grieving friends, a remote Scandinavian forest, an ancient thing that wants worship. It's scrappier and more monster-forward than Midsommar but scratches the exact same itch for folkloric dread in the woods.

But Lower budget, more conventional scares — it trades atmosphere for a literal creature at points.

The Ritual poster

Kill List2011

A grim British thriller that swerves into full cult-horror territory in its last act, with a similar trick of dread hiding in plain, mundane sight until it doesn't anymore.

But The tonal whiplash is brutal and the violence is nastier and more grounded than Midsommar's.

Kill List poster

Get Out2017

A different kind of outsider-trapped-in-a-smiling-community horror, using the genre as social allegory the way Midsommar uses it as grief allegory. Sharp, funny, and quietly devastating.

But Faster, punchier, more overtly satirical — a very different rhythm from Aster's slow burn.

Get Out poster

Apostle2018

An island cult, ominous rituals, gorgeous rot beneath a bucolic surface — Gareth Evans brings his action pedigree to folk-horror with unexpectedly gnarly results.

But Overlong and tonally uneven, swinging between slow dread and sudden brutal violence.

Apostle poster

Suspiria2018

A coven hides inside an institution the way Midsommar's cult hides inside a festival — dance instead of ritual, Berlin instead of Sweden, but the same sense of being slowly absorbed.

But Cold, punishing, and deliberately disorienting; it asks a lot more of your patience for less clarity.

Suspiria poster

Men in Black1997

Grief and a breakup drag a woman into an English village full of quietly wrong men and folkloric nightmare logic — a spiritual cousin in mood, if not in plot.

But Its final stretch goes so surreal and body-horror-heavy it may alienate viewers expecting restraint.

Men in Black poster

Kirikou and the Sorceress1998no page yet

Midsommar's visual grammar of ritual-as-spectacle has roots here: this is one of cinema's earliest attempts to stage pagan rite and communal frenzy as both anthropology and nightmare.

A silent Danish docu-horror hybrid about witch trials and pagan ritual, decades ahead of its time in imagery — devils, covens, ecstatic rites shot with startling, unsettling beauty.

But Silent, nearly a century old, and structured more like an essay than a narrative — patience required.

Force Majeure2014

Strip away the cult and the folklore and Midsommar is a breakup movie; this is that same engine — a relationship dissolving in public, in real time, in Sweden — with the horror swapped for excruciating comedy.

A Swedish family drama where a single moment of cowardice unravels a marriage in real time, with the same clinical, darkly funny eye for how relationships fracture under social pressure.

But No horror elements at all — this is a slow, cringing relationship drama, not a genre film.

Force Majeure poster

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Recommended by

Hereditary, Suspiria, The Invitation, Burnt by the Sun, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Wicker Man, It Follows, The Village, The Witch, The Wailing, Talk to Me, Apostle, Kill List, The Lighthouse, Häxan, The Ritual, The Killing of a Sacred Deer