Harrowing truth behind Midsommar cliff ritual that left viewers traumatised

There's plenty of weird and freaky s**t in Midsommar, which rather comes with the territory considering it's a folk horror film.

The movie knows how to get under your skin and leave you with some truly disturbing memories of what happened, but since that's par for the course in the genre it's doing a damn good job.

Anyhow, in Midsommar troubled couple Christian and Dani (Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh) end up travelling to Sweden and spending time with a weird cult that has some peculiar traditions.

The film gets incredibly weird the further on it goes, but our troubled pairing get an early indication of what things are like when they witness a ceremony where an elderly couple voluntarily jump off a cliff to their deaths.

Or death, as one of them actually survives the fall and has his head bashed in with a mallet to finish him off.

The freaked out newcomers get told that everyone does this when they turn 72, and that it's something called an Ättestupa.

This wasn't just made up for the movie, it's been plucked from Swedish folklore that elderly Norse pagans would throw themselves off high places to their deaths.

If you know, you know. (A24)

It's a part of folklore rather than a confirmed true thing that absolutely, definitely happened so we can't be sure if there's concrete historical evidence that it was ever done by real people.

In the Swedish folk museum there's a 'cudgel' on display which bears some resemblance to the tool that was used to finish off the second guy in Midsommar.

So the harrowing truth behind this ritual is pretty circumspect, it may have happened but it might also have been something that evolved from folklore without ever having any solid truth.

Director Ari Aster told GQ why it was such an important scene to have in the film.

He said: "The Ättestupa scene is the first major signifier that at least a large portion of the visiting group is doomed. It is also serving a couple of other functions that become more clear at the end.

This moment is plucked from folklore, so it's not clear whether it was fact or fiction. (A24)

"When these elders jump off this cliff to their death, it's forcing Dani into confrontation with this thing that she's been avoiding. Her family dies in a very horrible way at the beginning of the film, and she's been sort of pushing it away.

"She's been more or less successful at compartmentalizing the experience. So this forces her to contend with that."

Elsewhere in Midsommar, Jack Reynor said that he spent about 12 hours filming the movie's iconic orgy scene.

The actor added that filming for hours in the nude was blooming freezing, and that 'a lot of it had to be cut back for censorship' and ended up on the cutting room floor for being too raunchy.

Meanwhile, Florence Pugh said she 'found a true sisterhood' with her other performers on set, particularly in a scene after the orgy where her character breaks down crying and everyone joins her.

Florence Pugh puts on an intense performance in Midsommar (A24)

She said: "I remember the first take being so long, much longer than is displayed in the film that you all watched. When Ari said cut, we all clung on to each other’s arms and dug our nails into each other’s palms and wept. Sobbed. Heaved. I remember it being really hard to stop.”

“Truly, these women made this scene possible. It was TERRIFYING. As terrifying as it was to watch, it was to read and know we had to do it.

"I love these girls so much. I’m not a big crier, so going through that with them was true safely and love and respect. It only happened because I had them."