Box office Midsommar grossed $27.5million in the United States and Canada, and $20.5million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $48million. It made $3 million on its first day, including $1.1 million from Tuesday night previews, which
Deadline Hollywood called a "smashing start". It went on to debut to $10.9 million, finishing sixth at the box office;
IndieWire said it was "just decent" given its estimated $8 million budget, but the film would likely find success in home media. In its second weekend, the film dropped 44% to $3.7 million, finishing in eighth, and then made $1.6 million in its third weekend, finishing in ninth.
Audience reception Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at
PostTrak gave it an average 3 out of 5 stars, with 50% saying they would definitely recommend it. while
Screen Rant writer Mark Birrell said it was "one of the most polarizing horror movies of 2019" among general audiences. Birrell cited, as the film's positive qualities, its performances, cinematography, music, its atmospheric tone, which Birrell said was grounded in realism and a high level of attention to detail, and its themes, which included its exploration of mental health issues. However, he attributed its uneven audience reception to negative aspects, such its length, its lack of subtlety, its derivativeness and poor use of genre clichés, its over-stylization, its tendency to be over-serious, the implausible plot, the one-dimensionality of the characters, which Birrell found irritating, and the fact that he did not find the film scary.
Critical response garnered acclaim for her performance as Dani Ardor. On the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 405 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling,
Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with." On
Metacritic, which uses a
weighted average, the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 54 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". John DeFore of
The Hollywood Reporter described the film as the "horror equivalent of a destination wedding", and "more unsettling than frightening, [but] still a trip worth taking." Writing for
Variety, Andrew Barker noted that it is "neither the masterpiece nor the disaster that the film's most vocal viewers are bound to claim. Rather, it's an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution." David Edelstein of
Vulture praised Pugh's performance as "amazingly vivid" and noted that Aster "paces
Midsommar more like an opera (
Wagner, not
Puccini) than a scare picture," but concluded that the film "doesn't jell because its impulses are so bifurcated. It's a parable of a woman's religious awakening—that's also a woman's fantasy of revenge against a man who didn't meet her emotional needs—that's also a male director's masochistic fantasy of emasculation at the hands of a matriarchal cult." In
The New York Times,
Manohla Dargis was critical of the character depth behind Dani and Christian, finding them "instructively uninteresting" and stereotypically gendered as a couple. Eric Kohn of
IndieWire summarized the film as a "perverse breakup movie," adding that "Aster doesn't always sink the biggest surprises, but he excels at twisting the knife. After a deflowering that makes
Ken Russell's
The Devils look tame, Aster finds his way to a startling reality check."
Time Outs Joshua Rothkopf awarded the film a 5/5 star-rating, writing, "A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to
Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer." For
The A.V. Club, A. A. Dowd stated that the film "rivals
Hereditary in the cruel shock department", and labelled it a "B+ effort". Writing for
Inverse, Eric Francisco commented that the film feels "like a victory lap after
Hereditary", and that Aster "takes his sweet time to lull viewers into his clutches ... But like how the characters experience time, its passage is a vague notion." He described the film as "a sharp portrayal of
gaslighting". Richard Brody of
The New Yorker said that the film "is built on such a void of insight and experience, such a void of character and relationships, that even the first level of the house of narrative cards can't stand." He added, "In the end, the subject of
Midsommar is as simple as it is regressive: lucky Americans, stay home." Emma Madden in
The Guardian criticised the film for its
depiction of disabled characters as "monstrous" and argued that it resurrects harmful horror film tropes of
ableism and
eugenics. Tomris Laffly of
RogerEbert.com rated the film 4 out of 4 stars, describing it as a "terrifically juicy, apocalyptic cinematic sacrament that dances around a fruitless relationship in dizzying circles". A
Vanity Fair article from December 2019 reflecting on the
2010s in horror films argued that
Midsommar was part of a trend of "
elevated horror", along with Aster's previous
Hereditary and
Robert Eggers-directed
The Witch, and that it was an example of "horror at its best". In 2025, the film ranked number 99 on the "Readers' Choice" edition of
The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."
Accolades == Themes and analysis ==