10 Horror Movies Where The Final Girl Was The Villain

Joining the ever-growing ranks of the folk horror subgenre -- made by city slickers who fear everything green and open and bathed in sunlight -- Midsommar hit cinemas at the end of the '10s and surely did as much to damage Sweden's tourism industry as the country's covid policies.

Set in the sunny hamlet of Hårga, in Sweden's rural Hälsingland, Midsommar follows a group of American uni students as they join the locals to participate in and study a midsummer festival that occurs only once every 90 years. Among them is Dani (Florence Pugh), the film's hard-done-by protagonist who is recovering from the triple murder-suicide of her parents and sister, and contending with a boyfriend (Christian, played by Jack Reynor) who doesn't want anything to do with her.

The commune community get progressively stranger as the festival goes on, with the serving of human pies, the bashing of their elders' skulls, and a collective way of processing grief that is as creepy as it is bizarre. Oh, and they kill all of the visitors. Except for Dani.

Going the distance and coming out on top, Dani finds herself changed by Midsommar's conclusion, having accepted and even welcomed the grisly fates of her companions. Crowned May Queen, she embraces this position in the film's final moments, processing her grief and ecstasy in unison while watching her boyfriend burned alive, and joining the ranks of the cheerfully murderous Hårgans.