All Of Midsommar's Deaths Ranked By Horror

The following article includes discussions of suicide and graphic violence.

Ari Aster's "Midsommar" isn't just one of the most elegantly crafted and scariest horror movies of the last decade; it's arguably in the upper echelon of the most disturbing horror flicks ever made. Featuring a young, star-studded cast led by Florence Pugh and including Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, and William Jackson Harper, the film is a brutal portrait of grief and casual inhumanity, accented by much more extreme cruelty at the hands of a Swedish cult.

After a family tragedy leaves Dani (Pugh) in dire straits, she ends up going on an international voyage with her friends to a Swedish commune called the Hårga to experience their unique midsummer celebrations. The group is invited by Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who grew up in the small, rural community, and though Dani's relationship with her boyfriend, Christian (Reynor), is on its last legs, they go together, along with friends Mark (Poulter) and Josh (Harper). Of course, it becomes clear right away that nothing is as it seems, and the trip quickly descends into a bloody chain reaction that no one — including the viewer — can escape from.

A lot of people die over the course of "Midsommar." Though its slow pacing and building sense of dread evoke classic horror movies like "The Shining" (which the movie pays homage to in a couple of shots), the death toll is more in line with a summer vacation slasher flick. In honor of the spooky season making its annual return, we're going through every death in Midsommar and ranking them by order of horror. Let's get started.

The last-place spot on this list is an easy pick, as it's the one death we don't see on camera. Connie (Ellora Torchia) is one half of the British couple invited to the midsummer festival by Ingemar (Hampus Hallberg). Both she and her partner, Simon (Archie Madekwe), are deeply disturbed after seeing two elders of the Hårga kill themselves by jumping off a cliff. Although the other members of the commune assure the guests that this is a longstanding tradition that is seen as a great honor, Connie demands to leave. However, she's told that Simon set off for the train station without her — a lie that isn't explained until later on.

After Connie sets out herself, we don't hear from her again until the end of "Midsommar," when, in the movie's final scene, a ceremonial temple is loaded with corpses to be burned in a sacrificial ritual. Connie's waterlogged body is shown among the others being brought into the temple, suggesting that she was caught and drowned by the members of the Hårga. In an earlier scene, the commune members sink an adorned tree into the nearby lake and nearly do the same with a young boy. While Connie's body bears similar adornments, the nature of the drowning custom is never properly explained.

It's a rough way to go, to be sure, but we also don't see it happen, which naturally knocks this down to the bottom of the list. That said, it's still suitably spooky, though.

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Like most of the characters brought to the Hårga's midsummer festival as guests, Mark is doomed from the start — but he certainly doesn't make things any easier for himself by peeing on a sacred tree. One of the women in the commune repeatedly gives him small indications of attraction, but that all turns out to be a ruse. After she leads Mark away from his friends later in the movie, we don't see him again, but a Hårga member does show up later, wearing his skinned face.

Like Connie, we don't actually see Mark's death, but all the clues are there to tell us exactly what happens. One of the things you may notice when rewatching "Midsommar" is that one of the games the younger members of the Hårga are seen playing early on is referred to as "Skin the Fool" — a bit of foreshadowing. In the final scene, where all of the bodies are moved into the temple for the sacrifice, Mark is aptly dressed in a jester's cap.

While still an offscreen death, this one ranks higher than Connie's due to the whole "wearing the skinned face of your murder victim" thing. In this kind of list, that's a sure way to win a few extra points.

William Jackson Harper's Josh has an academic interest in the denizens and customs of the Hårga, but that doesn't stop him from being brutally murdered at their hands. His ambition to write a thesis on the commune's unique midsummer festival backfires when the true nature of the Hårga is revealed, and Josh winds up being beaten to death by a naked man wearing the skinned face of his friend Mark. In all fairness, he was sneaking around and photographing the group's ancient texts, which is a surefire way to get yourself murdered by a creepy, death-worshiping cult.

While bludgeoning is far from the most disturbing method of death seen in "Midsommar," Josh ranks higher here than the previous two characters because we actually see the attack. There's also the added scare factor of him snooping around where he doesn't belong beforehand, which imbues the skin-mask murder with an extra layer of terror.

The final death in "Midsommar" — Christian being burned alive inside the disemboweled body of a bear while his (ex?) girlfriend looks on with a creepy grin — doesn't actually rank at the top of this list. There are a few reasons for this, the first being that Christian is, frankly, just a tough guy to root for. Does he deserve to die? No, but he's also just the worst. Second, since the whole movie is about Dani's messed-up emotional catharsis and her toxic relationship with Christian, the final scene plays more like a twisted full-circle moment for her than as a tragic fate for him. Third, by the end of the movie, you're prepared for basically anything, and a lot of the shock factor is gone. And last, there are simply much more gruesome deaths waiting further down this list.

All that said, we should still pour one out for Christian. Dani has the chance to save his life by picking a random Hårga villager to take his place in the temple, but she chooses him instead, dooming him to an agonizing death surrounded by corpses as the flames of ritual sacrifice rend his body asunder. Neat, right? In better circumstances, Christian might have realized the error of his ways and truly become a better person. Unfortunately, he only becomes a hotter one.

You know, because of the fire and everything.

One of the most horrifying scenes in all of "Midsommar" is the ättestupa ritual that kicks off the increasingly brutal chain of events at the Hårga. Dani, Christian, and the other guests travel with the locals to the foot of a cliff, where two elderly members of the community, Ylva (Katarina Weidhagen) and Dan (Björn Andrésen), leap to their deaths. Ylva dies on impact, while Dan barely survives — but more on that in just a moment.

This disturbing scene is based on very real ancient Nordic traditions, in which elderly community members would sometimes seek death or be killed after reaching a certain age or losing their independence. While it may not be the most horrifying moment in the film, it's incredibly shocking on your first watch, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Ylva's death is so swift and brutal, and perceived so strangely from the locals, that every second after it is laced with terror.

Movies like "Midsommar" are designed to make you sick, and this scene absolutely nails that.

Dan's death occurs immediately after Ylva's, as he leaps off the cliff alongside her in one of the Hårga's disturbing rituals. However, he actually lives a moment longer, as the fall itself doesn't fully do the job. Unfortunately, Dan's final moments of life are filled with excruciating agony, ending only when another member of the community takes a sledgehammer to his skull to finish him off.

This death is basically neck-and-neck with Ylva's, but the added element of murder to assist the suicide makes it somehow even more unsettling. The white robes, the enormous wooden mallet, the vomit-inducing special effects of Dan's mangled, still-breathing body — it's a horrifying soup of brutal evil that, despite every instinct to look away, you can't stop staring at.

And yet, there are two moments in "Midsommar" that are definitively more horrifying, starting with the very first scene in the movie.

The beginning of "Midsommar" is one of the most terrifying opening scenes in the history of horror films. We enter the story as Dani discovers that her sister has killed both herself and their parents, rigging up an elaborate double-murder suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. Pugh steals the show right from the start with perhaps the most agonizing and disturbing screams you'll ever hear in a horror movie. As the emergency workers work their way inside the house and discover exactly what's happened, the audience is surrounded by vocal, violent grief.

It's a truly wild way to start a movie — even one that goes to the brutal lengths that "Midsommar" reaches later on. From the jump, we're told explicitly what kind of film this is going to be. There's no slow buildup to the horror, just an anvil drop of abject darkness. At its core, the film is a story about the effects of loss and deep depression, and seeing Dani's state so viscerally at the beginning fills every subsequent scene with tension.

Truthfully, this moment nearly made the top spot on this list. While it's not as grotesque as later deaths in the movie, or as riddled with cult iconography and that extra layer of the arcane, it's such a violent way to start the story that it may end up staying with you more than any other scene. Ultimately, though, we had to go in a different direction for the number-one spot.

If you've seen "Midsommar," you probably expected this scene to make the top of the list. After all, while there are tons of brutal, shocking, and disturbing scenes throughout the movie, nothing quite matches up against Simon getting turned into a blood eagle.

The blood eagle is a form of extreme torture and execution believed to have been practiced in the old Norse world, though scholars don't agree on whether it was real or simply included in fictional stories. Those who are squeamish might not want to read the rest of this description, but in essence, the procedure involves severing the victim's ribs from his spine and pulling his lungs out through his back, creating the impression of a pair of bloody "wings."

That's exactly what happens to Simon after he and Connie demand to leave the Hårga. Christian discovers him strung up near the end of the movie, somehow still alive and left to suffer slowly in agony. His fully dead body is then put into the temple that the cult burns.

It's the single most visceral (quite literally) kill in "Midsommar," even more so than the two cliff deaths. It also perfectly represents the film's fascination with agony, which is seen repeatedly in moments like Dani discovering her family's dark fate and her crying out in unison with the Hårga women.