The 2019 film Midsommar (Links to an external site.), directed by Ari Aster and starring Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor is a folk horror flick with themes of toxic love, emotional dysregulation, and troubled relationships. The film follows a couple who travels to Sweden to observe the Mid-Summer festival of a secluded community in the country. There, the couple experiences a series of events leading to the realization that the community has ties to the occult. This film is “wild” as it shows the life of a community living without influence from the outside world, and even more than that demonstrates what happens when those who are out of control don’t have to answer to anyone for their behavior. This “wild” community has is so far disconnected from the rest of the world that they are able to commit wild acts and never take accountability for them as their history tells it.
There is a scene (Links to an external site.) in the movie in which the community gets the carcass of a large bear and then places the boyfriend inside its body after it was decided that he would be sacrificed alongside others in this Mid-Summer ritual. The bear itself serves as a symbol of how in touch with nature this community is, while the act that follows demonstrates their out of control behavior that has shown to become a long held tradition that they’ve been able to keep up.
