Ari Aster’s Midsommar is no stranger to terrifying and disturbing details. The sun-drenched, heart-of-summer horror film has quite a few unsettling moments as a young woman, her boyfriend, and a group of friends and anthropology grad students take a trip to a remote Swedish village to study a unique midsummer celebration that soon reveals itself to be full of frightening rituals, human sacrifice, and more. It’s not just the obvious images and scenes in the film that are horrifying, though, as fans are discovering even further nightmare-inducing images: creepy faces in the background.
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On Twitter, one fan noticed a startling detail in the scene in which the Hargas are carrying Dani (Florence Pugh) to dinner, lifting her up on a platform of sorts to do so in what is otherwise an idyllic scene. In the background, however, you can pretty clearly see a face in the trees with what appears to be a tube of foliage coming from the mouth.
when the hårgas lift dani onto the pedestal and start walking to the dinner table, you can see her dead sister’s face in the trees with the exhaust tube in her mouth… this shit is in different areas! what the fuck! pic.twitter.com/zg4ejkfydW
— ger (@danieIgayIewis) September 22, 2019
It would be easy to dismiss the image as just coincidence, but in Midsommar, Dani’s sister ends her life by suicide in a very visually similar way — by connecting a tube from her car’s exhaust to her mouth. Her sister also did something similar to kill their parents, connecting another tube into their airtight bedroom. The fallout of those deaths, especially Dani’s crushing grief, is a major element of Midsommar. As fans noted in the comments to the Twitter post, it’s as though Dani’s grief and torment was literally always lurking in the background and that the Harga were quite literally raising her up and helping her move forward — granted in a disturbing way.
Interestingly, this isn’t the only “creepy” background face viewers are discovering in Midsommar. On Reddit (via Bloody Disgusting) other fans have noticed additional faces. Specifically, fans are noting a face in the snow outside Dani’s window during a scene in the film’s first act, a face or figure in the rocks during the “fall” scene, and a face in the forest line during the wailing and singing scene at the beginning of the film.
It’s not clear if these faces are deliberate but given all of the other small details in the film — particularly with the use of light and the details of the Harga village — it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if Dani’s grief really was lurking in the background the whole time. There’s also the possibility that there could be more such faces tucked in the film, something that fans will be able to check for themselves in a bit more detail soon. Midsommar will be released on Digital and On Demand by A24 on Tuesday, September 24th with Blu-ray and DVD via Lionsgate to follow on October 8th.
Did you see the creepy faces in Midsommar? Let us know in the comments below.
