Midsommar: Murderous pagans, Christian cock, and three gay subtext couples. You can almost ignore the LGBT erasure.

I'm interested in the possibiliy of ancient pagan religions surviving in contemporary Europe, in mummer's plays and Punch and Judy, so I wanted to see  Midsommar (2019) in spite of the reviews pointing out that everyone is heterosexual and a lot of girls get naked.

In The Wicker Man (1973), an uptight British police officer investigates a free-love island  ("Children, what does the maypole represent?" "A penis!"), and ends up being their virgin sacrifice.  A naked lady bounces all over the place, and there's a lot of heterosexual shenanigans.  Midsommar couldn't be worse, right?

It could. It's very long and very boring, with the "surprise" ending broadcast from Scene 1.  But there are a lot of subtexts that turn it into a gay horror movie.

Anthropology student Christian -- ironic for a movie about paganism (Jack Reynor, left and below) was planning to break up with his girlfriend, but then her familiy was murdered, so he stuck around out of pity.  

A year later, he's ready to pull the plug on the long-dead relationship and move on.  His new bromantic partner Pelle invites him and another bromantic pair, Josh and Mark (William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, top photo) back to his village in northern Sweden to witness an ancient pagan midsummer festival.

The Soon-to-be-Ex invites herself along.

"But Babe,.it was really supposed to be all boys, buddy-bonding, late-night groping, and orgies with Swedish studs, but....

Imagine the discomfort of sharing an 8-hour plane flight with your Soon-to-be-Ex, while the guy you are crushing on is sitting right across the aisle!

When they reach the village, which is populated mostly by young blond women and elderly white-haired men,, they meet Pelle's brother Ingemar  (Hampus Hallberg, left), who has picked up a boy-girl couples in London: Simon (Archie Madekwa, who you know from Saltburn) and Connie.

More dicks after the break