Featured Image Credit: A24
Topics: Entertainment, Horror, Film
Bethan Finighan
As spooky season creeps up on us, it's time to revisit our favourite horror flicks.
And what better way to kick things off than with what has to be one of the most disturbing movies ever made, Midsommar.
In a tale that's a world away from her latest rom-com, the 2019 release follows Florence Pugh's character, Dani, as she embarks on a trip to a Swedish commune with her boyfriend and his friends.
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I mean, what could go wrong?
Well, spoiler alert, things take a very, very dark turn, as the gang falls victim to twisted cult... one by one.
In a shocking ending, Dani makes the chilling choice to sacrifice her boyfriend to the cult. The movie wraps up with an eerie close-up of Pugh, who slowly breaks into an unsettling smile.
In a candid chat with WIRED alongside We Live In Time co-star Andrew Garfield, Pugh opened up about the scene, revealing that she had a 'different version' of events to the film's director Ari Aster.
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Pugh shared: “The idea is that she’s now gone through a psychotic break.
"From the moment she chooses – I believe accidentally – Christian, her boyfriend, to get burnt, she keeps on waking up [from] and going back into this psychotic break."
She then added: “When the end happens, where everything is going up in flames, I tried to embody what I was like when I was five on Bonfire Night.
"And just how exciting it was to see flames, and I wanted to revert back to a very small and simple life of how simple things made, and make, children feel. Because in that moment, I presumed she wasn’t there anymore.”
But it appears the director had a different vision.
Back in 2019, Aster told Entertainment Weekly that he sees the ending as more of a 'perverse wish fulfilment' and a 'fantasy that was playing with a kind of catharsis that I hope people will have to wrestle with'.
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He says he hoped the film would "have people cheering and then maybe hopefully later on contending with that a little bit more".
According to HuffPost, a leaked screenplay for Midsommar describes the film's ending as follows: “A smile finally breaks onto Dani’s face. She has surrendered to a joy known only by the insane. She has lost herself completely and she is finally free. It is horrible and it is beautiful.”
So do with that what you will. Which ending is your winner - Team Pugh or Team Aster?