After a series of teases ratcheted up the anticipation last week, A24 has finally loosed the first teaser for Ari Aster’s Hereditary follow-up Midsommar.
Midsommar follows a couple, Dani (Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth) and Christian (Jack Reynor, Free Fire), who travel to their friend’s hometown in rural Sweden for its fabled mid-summer festival. “What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult,” per the film’s official synopsis. Also starring are Will Poulter (Black Mirror: “Bandersnatch”), William Jackson Harper (The Good Place), Vilhem Blomgren (Gösta), Ellora Torchia (The Split) and Archie Madekwe (Legacy).
Today’s teaser leans heavily on the “idyllic” elements of the film’s titular celebration, “a crazy, nine-day festival [that] only happens every 90 years.” Set to rhythmic chimes and breathing, the clip is all unsettling smiles and the promise of eerie psychedelia, with near-subliminal flashes of ritualistic violence—blood smeared on a tablet, an eviscerated bear, a falling body and, finally, an unseen chorus of wailing—the strongest suggestion of something truly malevolent at Midsommar’s heart.
Watch the Midsommar teaser below and catch up on everything we know about the much-anticipated film so far here. Aster’s next effort hits theaters on Aug. 3.