Content and Trigger Warning Guide: Midsommar

Note: This guide may contain spoilers.

Synopsis: A couple travels to Sweden to visit a rural hometown’s fabled mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult. (Source: IMDb) 

MPAA Rating: R

Estimated Self-Censored Rating Using Full Guide: PG-13

Watch On: Amazon

Content Warnings

• Nudity/Sexual Content (6)
  • Mark (Will Poulter) routinely makes sexual comments throughout the film. 
  • A tapestry depicting a woman spiking a man’s drink with her period blood and baking pubic hair into his food is shown at 0:45:27-0:46:00. 
  • Christian unknowingly ingests Maja’s pubic hair and period blood during 1:29:43-1:30:27. 
  • A penis is barely visible at 1:33:07 when Ulf wear’s Mark’s skin. Shot ends at 1:33:22.
  • Full body nudity from 1:58:50-2:02:24. Christian impregnates Maja in a ritual, surrounded by 12 naked women. Elsewhere, Dani blesses the village’s livestock. 
  • Full body nudity from 2:06:04-2:08:16. The sex ritual concludes. Christian (penis and buttocks visible) runs out of the building and takes shelter in a chicken coop. Christian encounters Simon’s naked body (penis visible) strung up and mutilated for a “blood eagle” ritual. 
• Blood (2)
  • Two elders have the palms of their hands slit at 0:59:42 and smear the blood across a runestone, ending at 1:00:13.
  • Josh suffers a head wound at 1:33:25 and a pool of blood forms under his body. Scene concludes at 1:33:58.
• Graphic Violence (7)
  • The bodies of the elders are burned from 1:12:58-1:13:27.
  • Josh is caught photographing the village’s sacred text at 1:32:57 by Ulf, who is wearing Mark’s skin. Josh is hit over the head with the mallet used to kill the second elder earlier in the film. Scene concludes at 1:33:58.
  • Josh’s foot (with a rune carved into the sole) is seen sticking up out of the garden from 2:07:25-2:07:42.
  • Christian’s finds Simon’s body at 2:08:07. He is suspended in the air by rope and his lungs (still breathing) have been extracted out the back of his body. His body is no longer visible at 2:09:20, shortly after Christian has been drugged by another villager.
  • 2:14:07 and on depicts the bodies of the human sacrifices being prepped for placement in the temple. Connie’s body is retrieved from the lake and wheeled in with the other bodies seen earlier in the film. A group of villagers gut a bear carcass and place Christian’s paralyzed body inside. The temple is lit on fire and the bodies are burned.

Trigger Warnings

• Domestic/Child Abuse (2)
  • Christian emotionally abuses and neglects his girlfriend, Dani, throughout the film. 
  • Maja, a sixteen year old, has sex with Christan who is twenty five (from 1:58:50-2:02:24, then 2:06:04-2:08:16-2:06:56).
• Drug/Alcohol Abuse (3)
  • Dani is pressured into taking edible shrooms at 0:27:17, resulting in a bad trip from 0:30:44-0:32:32. She has hallucinations of her dead sister and grass growing through her skin.
  • Dani unknowingly drinks mushroom tea at 1:37:42 and begins tripping at 1:38:14, having occasional hallucinations of facial distortions, her dead family, and “breathing” plants. The effects wear off around 1:54:48.
  • Christian is given a similar drink at 1:44:13 to prepare him for the ritual with Maja. His effects persist through 2:09:20, in which he is drugged with a different substance to paralyze him that remains effective until the end of the film. 
• Self-Harm/Suicide (7)
  • The film opens with a suicide note from the main character’s sister. 
  • 0:08:51-0:10:57 shows the aftermath of the murder-suicide. Garden hoses have been taped to the exhaust pipes of two running cars and dragged to different rooms of the house, one taped under the door to Dani’s parents room and the other taped directly onto her sister’s face. 
  • Dani observes a mural above her bed that depicts someone slitting their wrists, shown from 0:50:55-0:51:07.
  • Two village elders throw themselves off a cliff, starting at 1:01:37. The impact kills the first elder, the second doesn’t die from the fall and is beaten to death with a mallet. Shots of their mangled bodies are shown at 1:01:42-1:01:44, 1:02:14-1:02:21, 1:03:13-1:04:35. The ritual formally concludes at 1:05:53. 
  • Dani has a nightmare which includes imagery from the suicide ritual, starting at 1:15:58 and ending at 1:16:16. Visual comparisons are made between the elder’s suicide and the murder-suicide of her family. 
  • Two villagers volunteer to burn in the temple at the end of the film. They are seen at 2:17:43.
• Intense War Scenes/Torture (1)
  • The film ends with Chrisitan being burned alive in a bear carcass. 

This guide was completed by Cam Cope, a film student at Colorado Film School.