In a Fangoria q & a, Jordan Peele tells the following to Midsommar director Ari Aster: “I think you’ve made the most idyllic horror film of all time. You’ve taken Stepford Wives and shattered the attractiveness of that movie with this one. That alone is a feat. This movie is just so unique. This hasn’t existed yet, and anything after Midsommar (A24, 7.3) is going to have to contend with it. I mean, this usurps The Wicker Man as the most iconic pagan movie to be referenced.

“It plays a weird sleight of hand [in which] it transcends the horror of itself. It is an ascension of horror. I didn’t feel victimized; I felt like I was being put up on this pedestal and honored through the eyes of the protagonist. It’s a very unique feeling for a film to conjure because after it ended, I found myself looking back at the final act like, ‘Holy shit.’ That was some of the most atrociously disturbing imagery I’ve ever seen on film, and yet I experienced it with this open-mouthed, wild-eyed gape. I think that part of how we get there is never reducing the villains to any kind of snarling monsters with an evil agenda.”

Hereditary sold me on the idea of Aster being an inspired, X-factor. deft-touch director. My kind of elevated-horror guy and then some. I was very excited about seeing Midsommar (and I still am) but Jordan Peele creaming all over it scared me half to death.

What’s the point of staging an extreme pagan festival every 90 years? Isn’t that a bit much? Wouldn’t ten years make more sense? Or at the most every 25 years? And where does this Swedish village find these extreme 20something psychos? Notice: Does insanity run in your blood? Were your grandparents or great-grandparents committed to state asylums for the criminally insane? If so, the organizers of a once-every-90 years festival are looking to talk to you and possibly enlist you in their cause.”