Audience Member: What would you hope that people take away from this film, and what have you seen people misinterpret?

Ari Aster: I’m hoping that the film is consistently doing at least two things all the way. For instance, this is a folk horror for most of the visitors, but for Dani, I don’t believe it is. For Dani, it’s a wish fulfillment fantasy and a fairytale. Because we’re most closely aligned with Dani, that’s effectively how I view the film; I see the film as a fairytale. And if it’s a horror film, which I’m not sure it is. I know that people take umbrage with filmmakers disowning the horror title, and I don’t do that; I love the horror genre. Hereditary is one. I don’t necessary think [Midsommar] is, but if it’s a horror film, it’s a horror movie about codependency. Ultimately, you begin with a woman who’s in a dysfunctional codependent relationship, and then at the end, she finds herself in a maybe slightly more functioning but equally codependent relationship with the most codependent family possible. But it’s gonna work this time.

For me, I wanted there to be a way of watching this movie and Hargå feeling like this lived in place with a deep history and very rich traditions, a place where you can really stand and feel is real. At the same time, I want there to be a way of watching the film where they’re strictly a fulfillment of all of Dani’s needs, and they are almost a manifestation of her will.

So when you have the atestupan with the people jumping off the cliff, that could be a big horror movie set piece spectacle, or it could be an opportunity given to Dani to confront the the thing she’s been running away from, and then even listen to a person’s perspective on the matter that may be illuminating for her and might allow her to work through some — or it might be a toxic filter that brings her closer to it.

The movie’s been, in my opinion, misread in a million different ways — I don’t want to get into it, but there’s plenty of people who are in my opinion misconstruing it, but in the end, that’s what happens; it’s not mine anymore.

In all sincerity, I want people to feel a little bit confused about how they’re feeling. The ending is designed to be very very cathartic. You are aligned with Dani, so Christian is for all intents and purposes her foil, and so it’s a perverse happy ending, and I hope if feels happy while also feeling unhappy and awful. I know that what we were going for was a feeling of awe at the end, but hopefully, that’s something that viewer can wrestle with later.