While I wasn’t as freaked-out by Hereditary as so many others were, there were no denying two things: Toni Colette was killing it as the movie’s scream queen, and director Ari Aster has a Hell of a future digging into people’s nightmares. And he’s not wasting any time doing it again as A24 has debuted the new trailer for “Scandinavian folk horror” Midsommar, which looks like it’s on some cultish Wicker Man shit.
Rising stars are all over this one, too, including Fighting wth My Family breakout Florence Pugh, Sing Street‘s Jack Reynor, and The Maze Runner‘s Will Poulter. And this thing is creepy right from the start, as we’re taken into a small Nordic village where everyone is dressed in similar white robes, and a woman warns that the newcomers’ defenses must be lowered so they can be overtaken by some strange “influence”. Why that isn’t a hint to turn around and leave is beyond me, but things get weirder from there.
Here’s the official synopsis: A couple’s vacation to a Swedish village takes a sinister turn when the insular townspeople invite them into a series of rituals that render their pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving, in this dread-soaked and viscerally disquieting psychological thriller.
If I’m honest, this intrigues me a lot more than Hereditary ever did, but I dig the freaky religious stuff. Midsommar hits theaters on August 9th.
