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Midsommar is the latest horror film from Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, which starred Toni Collette and was a sensation. That was a domestic, claustrophobic scenario packed with jump scares — well, jump-ish scares; I wasn’t that scared, actually — whereas this is pastoral and relies more on building a quiet dread. It’s set in the remote countryside where a pagan community has its own superstitions and rituals and ‘elders’ and a maypole — and they are never good news, maypoles. This is clever and gripping in its own right, but it is also familiar and will certainly put you in mind of The Wicker Man. That is, the 1973 original, not the 2006 remake starring a deranged Nicolas Cage jump-kicking women in the throat, which we will never talk of again. I regret even bringing it up.

The film stars the magnificent Florence Pugh as Dani, who is grief-stricken — a prologue at the outset neatly shows us how she was traumatised — and clings to Christian (Jack Reynor), the boyfriend who is bad for her. She invites herself on a trip to Sweden with him and his friends — Mark (Will Poulter), Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) — who are also bad for her. They’re not evil, but have no emotional intelligence and can’t connect with what she has been through. Consequently, they treat her as a pain and a drag and needy. There is an undercurrent of sharp humour running throughout, particularly evident in the scene where Christian tells his friends that Dani will be accompanying them. They’re sort of Seth Rogan lites, these fellas, and we know Dani deserves better, but does she know she deserves better? (Not yet. Give her time.)

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Pelle, who is Swedish, is taking them to his native country to meet his folks, plus he has promised they can witness ‘a sort of nine-day festival we’re doing in the woods’ which happens ‘only once every 90 years’.