CULT LEADER

ARI ASTER IS trying not to lose his head. It’s a drizzly May afternoon in New York, where the man behind last year’s most disturbing, decapitation-filled horror, Hereditary, has been frantically finishing its follow-up. Locking yourself in a dark room for weeks on end to edit a movie is an intense experience at the best of times. It’s even more intense when that movie is Midsommar: a “bleak adult fairy tale”, as the 32-year-old calls it, brimming with blood rituals, pagan cults and revelations about death and the human condition. Throw into the mix the fact that Hereditary was among 2018’s biggest critical smashes, rocketing the first-time director from film school anonymity to horror’s top table, and you’d forgive him for looking like the moviegoers as they left cinemas after his terrifying debut: stressed, dishevelled, brought to the brink of madness.

“I’m hanging on in there,” the filmmaker insists with a smile, surfacing from his edit suite to meet in a Manhattan café. “It’s a little bit crazy right now but I’ll survive.” The same likely can’t be said for the tourists at the centre of his latest chilling tale. Set in a remote Swedish village, follows Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor), an American couple who, despite their relationship hitting a rocky patch, embark on a round-the-world holiday adventure with pals to a mysterious festival held once every 90 years. Judging