Midsommar: Why The Director’s Cut Is The Movie’s Best Version

Midsommar wowed audiences when it hit theaters in 2019, but the director’s cut is the movie’s best version. The director’s cut adds 30 minutes of footage to the already lengthy film. The additional scenes give extra meat to the character motivations, which ultimately benefits Midsommar in the long run.

The movie tells the story of a young woman named Dani (Florence Pugh) who travels to a remote part of Sweden with her boyfriend and his friends for what should be a quaint midsummer festival. Things take a dark and bizarre turn when the group realizes they’ve stumbled into a cult, which bolsters the folk horror aspects of Midsommar, drawing parallels to other movies like The Wicker Man. The additional scenes that Ari Aster adds to his director’s cut amplify the horrors of what the group goes through.

Midsommar builds to its most horrific sequence in its finale throughout the film. The additional scenes in the director’s cut provide more context for everything that happens in its ending. Midsommar‘s director’s cut is the best version of the movie because it gives more power to Dani’s decision to sacrifice Christian and stay with the flowery Swedish cult.

Midsommar’s Director’s Cut Gives More Empathy to Dani

A large focus of Midsommar is Dani’s fragile mental and emotional state. The core story remains the same in the Midsommar director’s cut. At the top of the film, Dani’s sister kills their parents and then herself. As Dani’s boyfriend Christian had been considering breaking up with her, he only offers hollow emotional support. The theatrical version sees Christian growing distant from Dani and subtly lashing out at her due to his resentment regarding the fact that he wasn’t able to break up with her. The director’s cut spells out Christian’s feelings toward Dani more clearly, as he constantly gaslights her in this version of Midsommar. Dani lost her entire family, so she should have been able to rely on Christian for support. As he treats her with blatant cruelty in the director’s cut, Dani’s mental and emotional state continues to deteriorate.

Midsommar‘s ending remains the same, but the additional scenes added in the director’s cut makes the ending more powerful. With the theatrical version, Dani’s decision to sacrifice Christian felt a little rash. The film implies Dani could be suffering from a mental illness, aside from the immense trauma of losing her family in such a horrific way. Christian’s constant gaslighting in the director’s cut shows that he took advantage of that. While it’s still an extreme choice to sacrifice him, the director’s cut of Midsommar highlights how important it is for Dani to free herself from him. Dani’s smile as she watches Christian burn to death signifies that she is finally on her way to healing. The abuse she suffered from Christian in the director’s cut makes the finale all the more satisfying of a conclusion and strengthens her choice.

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