Australian Censors Reckon "Midsommar" Is the Most Hardcore Film of the Year

Hold onto your flower crowns. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Last year, writer-director Ari Aster made a hell of a name for himself with his debut feature, Hereditary.

In our review, we called the flick—starring Toni Collette as a grieving woman dealing with a case of the ol' demonic possession—"deeply, deeply upsetting" and "pure nightmare fuel".

We then interviewed Aster to find out how he made 2018's "most messed-up movie".

One year later, he's already outdone himself.

His slow-burn follow-up Midsommar arrives in Australian cinemas Thursday, and stars Florence Pugh as, you guessed it, a grieving woman who tags along with her boyfriend (Jack Reynor) and his mates to a pagan festival in sunny-all-the-time Sweden, only to discover this ain’t no Coachella, but something far more sinister.

Here’s the trailer, if you have the stomach for it.

On 18 July, the Australian Classification Board gave Midsommar an R18+ rating for "high impact injury detail", restricting it to audiences 18 years of age or older. (Aussies who are 17 or under can’t even get in with a parent or guardian, despite their peers being allowed in America, which is how we got this delightful video of a small child being rushed out of the cinema shortly after a graphic sex scene.)

The Australian Classification website provides a handy guide explaining their ratings in further detail, and under the categories of "themes" and "violence", Midsommar earned "high impact" ticks. It almost notched the unprecedented achievement of getting "high impact" ticks in all categories, but had to settle for "strong impact" when it came to "drug use", "nudity" and "sex", and "moderate impact" in the gentlest of the categories, "language".

Behold:

Using Student Edge’s foolproof system of Film Impact Measurement (or what we’re calling FIM), we calculated that Midsommar earned a FIM score of 50 out of a possible 60.

It’s just maths, folks.

When you compare that FIM score with the only other films to get released in cinemas with an R18+ rating this year (a rarity unto itself), nothing else comes close.

Lords of Chaos, Aniara and Dragged Across Concrete, which were extremely limited releases, only managed 42, while Lars Von Trier’s arthouse serial killer feature The House That Jack Built scored 38. The bigger-budgeted Hellboy, which was a critical and commercial disaster, received 26.

Meanwhile, the zombie-Nazi thriller Overlord was initially given an R18+ rating and earned a score of 24, before Paramount Pictures resubmitted a "modified” cut and got an MA15+ rating instead (the violence dropped from "high impact" to "strong impact").

(We reached out to Midsommar's Australian distributor, Roadshow, to ask if they considered submitting a modified cut before settling on the R18+ rating, but they did not reply in time for publication.)

So, what makes Midsommar so freaking metal?

"By having sex scenes that don’t leave a lot to the imagination, in addition to some truly shocking moments of violence, is enough to tip into it that R rated category," Cinema Nova’s general manager Kristian Connelly tells Student Edge.

However, given that Cinema Nova was the top grossing location in the country on Hereditary, Connelly’s not afraid to present it to his audience in Carlton, Victoria.

"We’re a cinema that’s not concerned by things like classification," he says.

"We know our audience, and our audience truly trusts us. And when it comes to a movie like Midsommar, as long as we don’t go and try and pretend that it’s something other than what it is, and gussy it up as feelgood—a bit of armchair travel—that it is in fact a film from a director who’s known for pushing the envelope, and that the picture is recognised by critics and other filmmakers as being something of a very unique nature or possesses aspects that are appealing to a genre crowd, I would bring it to our audience to give them an opportunity to see it."

Tony Bective of Luna Cinemas in Leederville, Western Australia, is similarly not shying away from Midsommar.

"What we look at is, 'Is it a good film?'" he explains.

"We had high expectations and anticipation because of Hereditary, which was also an excellent film. It’s no doubt going to be a really interesting film in terms of: 'What is [Aster] gonna do this time?'"

However, Bective insists the extreme violence and impact of the movie is warranted.

"The scenes where there is horror or certain violence, it actually fits into the theme of the film," he says.

"It’s not gratuitous at all; we were all surprised with its R rating."

Still, he believes the rating may even attract those who want to "see what it’s all about".

If you're over the age of 18, you’ll get a chance to see what it's all about when it opens in select cinemas this Thursday 8 August. Happy Midsommar!

Header Image: Roadshow Films