Ok, there's an issue with this film that is bothersome. I've seen it spoiled by people who could not have seen it (before local release date and not the kind to grab a torrent), who have spoiled it because someone else did it to them or they might borrow some clunking worldliness by it. But that's a strange one because this is not a film that depends on twists and turns but rather a growing realisation on the part of the audience as to what is really happening (it is NOT obvious). It's funny, too as the director's previous film Hereditary played a fun game of anti spoilers with an intentionally misleading trailer. The trailer for Midsommar doesn't really do a lot of beating around the bush but it's not plot points that stand or fall, here, it's your own emotional response. However, in deference to any who want to go in fresh and in contempt for the Troglodytes who think they're being sophisticated by spoiling with material already in the trailer. There are significant moments of real shock in this film but they serve more as transition than motivation (but there really is some bad stuff, the kind of which you think: oh, they wouldn't do that would th-? Before containing a big scream).
So, what's left to say? Plenty, really, and this feeds back into plot management. Dani's family tragedy is clearly telescoped in the earliest scenes so, while its details are best kept cloaked, it doesn't shock or surprise as much as leave a gut punch. Already fearing she has become too fulsome with her boyfriend, she is at a loss as to how to proceed to keep what might be her one handhold on personal control. So, while the news about the Swedish trip surprises her she all but invites herself. Who knows, there might even be an opportunity to share some fruitful bonding.
Aster did something similar to this with Hereditary, whereby a means of emerging from grief is suggested and tried before something far worse than a few tricks with ouija boards could ever be. So with Midsommar a series of disorientating and divisive incidents that put the friends under others' control tell us little about where they might be placed, narratively and physically, by the time of the final scene. In the end it's a little like the alignment of the planets at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (but that still won't give you the impact of the end).
A second, quasi-spoiler, is that this film is just an update or even remake of The Wicker Man. Beyond both fitting easily into the sub-genre of folk horror there isn't much to this. The earlier film's grounded skepticism of its final act is what produces the horror. We can't stop it, despite our disbelief as we know they believe and consider it unstoppable. The rich and Wagnerian fall of the ending of Midsommar is not about belief but an acknowledgement of ritual in support of some very earthly nature. There is real intention and poignancy in the setting of this tale sharing its general location with the home of the Nobel Prize.
Aster again has responded to the aesthetic needs of his tale and instead of Hereditary's gloomy dark interiors we have the warm open spaces of a summer under the midnight sun. Tootling and groaning folk music and costumes could only ever smell of the lightest perspiration, worn under head dresses made of wildflowers and straw. You want to be there. And when things get trippy he uses CG both subtly and showily as flowers that seem to swallow and food that seems to breathe in the distance and in closeup with the same absence of effort. The fragrance of gardens and sex are only window decoration to these revellers (and this is the point to stick in a bit about some lazy othering of Scandinavians, peasants and the notion of the cursed appearance of the inbred none of which are resolved nor challenged) as their rites evoke both and seem to undress the most ardent of urbanite inhibitions. We close on a facial expression and we feel both at home and less trusting of home.
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