Planning to watch Midsommar (2019)? The best advice I can give you is to prepare yourself for repetitive doses of extremely loud and spine-chilling moaning, sobbing and filleted bodies. Ari Aster, back just a year later from the revered Hereditary (2018), serves up an incredibly thought-provoking and mind-bending depiction of rural Swedish Pagan ritual and what happens when outsiders doth intervene.

Taking the ‘us vs them’ concept to an entirely new dimension, Midsommar deeply interrogates issues of dependency, worship and idolatry and the fragile cycle of life. Following the four oblivious American outsiders into this seemingly idyllic, yet strange, Swedish Midsommar festival is akin to following innocent lambs to the slaughter. Descending into the utterly surreal, it is as if we the viewers have partook in the ‘substances’ forced upon these unfortunate souls – we watch this film as if under a drug-induced haze, feeling paralysed in our seats as we watch these victims crawl towards their ritualistic end.

And yet despite the horror and gore evident in this cult-like assembly, there is constant scenes and elements of beauty to admire throughout. The gentle, vivid, natural colour palette – bright greens grass, baby blue skies, egg-yolk yellow wooden huts and multi-coloured flowers abound. Nature and the natural cycle of life are key motifs in Midsommar. After all, Dani essentially becomes one with the Earth, seemingly sprouting branches, leaves and blooming flowers as she watches the fires consume their human sacrifice. The cycle is completed in that moment and the fine line between life and death that is played with throughout the film is officially blurred.

Hindsight is vital after watching Aster’s work. I left not knowing what on earth I had just witnessed – creepy orgies, disembowelled bodies that have been stuffed with hay and dressed up as medieval Jokers, more group cry sessions than I can count… I was lost. But upon reflection, I was able to recognise the messages inherent in its bones. Dependency is debilitating, life is short and fragile, we are one with the Earth’s cycle and, of course, never agree to go to someone’s strange 90-year sacrifice festival.