Five years after the Ari Aster-directed Midsommar debuted in theaters in 2019, Florence Pugh has offered her “different” interpretation of the haunting and divisive ending of the folk horror film.
The critically acclaimed horror feature, which remains one of Aster’s most highly regarded films, follows an American couple (Pugh’s Dani and Jack Reynor’s Christian) as they get drawn into an enigmatic cult at a remote village in Sweden during a midsummer festival.
In the film’s final moments, Dani is crowned the May Queen and chooses her boyfriend Christian to die as the village’s sacrifice. Clad in a floral dress and a crown, the final shot featured Dani smiling, while Christian — dressed in bearskin — was being burned alive.
What was Florence Pugh’s take on Midsommar’s ending?
In a video shared by WIRED, Pugh and her We Live in Time co-star Andrew Garfield answer “the web’s most searched questions” including the actress’s take on Midsommar, which she claimed is different from Aster’s.
“So I have a different version to Ari [Aster], the director. The idea is that she’s now gone through a psychotic break. From the moment she chooses, I believe accidentally, Christian — her boyfriend — to get burnt, she keeps on waking up and going back into this like psychotic break,” said Pugh.
She continued, “When that moment at the end happens, where everything is going up in flames, I tried to embody what I was like when I was five on Bonfire Night and just how exciting it was to see flames. And I wanted to revert back to a very, very small and simple life of how simple things made and make children feel. Because in that moment, I presumed she wasn’t there anymore.”
You can watch the full video down below:
Midsommar also starred Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Archie Madekwe, Ellora Torchia, Gunnel Fred, Henrik Norlén, Julia Ragnarsson, Louise Peterhoff, and more.
