The Midsommar trailer offers the first look at writer-director Ari Aster’s horror movie followup to Hereditary, starring Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh. Aster made the jump to feature-length filmmaking last year with Hereditary, which is currently A24’s second-highest grossing film in the U.S. after Lady Bird. The horror-thriller was widely celebrated by critics for its nightmarish storyline and visuals, in addition to Toni Colette’s performance as the head of a family beset by a series of tragic and disturbing incidents. A24 clearly recongized they had something good going with Aster early on and announced his second film as a director, Midsommar, about a month before Hereditary opened in theaters last May.
Midsommar revolves around Christian (Reynor) and Dani (Pugh), a couple who take a summer vacation to Sweden to visit their friend’s hometown and check out the famous mid-summer festival. However, their trip goes horribly wrong after they find themselves caught up in a competition involving a local pagan cult. Will Poulter (The Maze Runner) and William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) costar in the movie, which A24 began marketing towards the end of February. The studio has since unveiled some actual footage, to go along with the earlier teasers.
A24 dropped the Midsommar trailer online today, following the teaser poster’s release last week. You can check it out, below.
The Midsommar teaser trailer is similar to the previews for Hereditary, in the way that it starts off building a sense of dread before then descending into an increasingly rapid-fire montage of gruesome and otherwise freaky imagery. Aster’s new film appears to be much more brightly-lit than his debut feature (in keeping with the whole mid-summer theme), but if anything that just makes it more unnerving when terrible things start to happen. The teaser also includes a bit where someone can be heard exhaling forcefully throughout the preview, much like the now-infamous tongue clicking noise from Hereditary. All in all, Aster seems to be using many of the same scare tactics here as he did in his previous film, but with some fresh twists added for good measure.
It’ll be interesting to see if general audiences are more or less impressed with Midsommar than they were with Hereditary. The latter, as mentioned, was a critical darling, yet earned a D+ CinemaScore and failed to have much appeal beyond the hardcore horror-loving crowd. Based on the teaser and its parallels to Hereditary, one imagines that Aster’s second film will probably end up being as polarizing as his first, when it comes to mainstream moviegoers. Of course, Midsommar doesn’t need to break the bank to be considered a success in the eye of cinephiles (much less, to cover its low budget).
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Source: A24
- Midsommar Release Date: 2019-07-03
