it’s funny, because I think I’d put the VVitch and Midsommar in the same supernatural seduction category, but the weird kind where the seduction relies on absolutely destroying these girls until there’s almost nothing left, and then scooping their remains up and putting a tinsel crown on top.
the seduction doesn’t work if these girls are whole and healthy; they have to be put through the meatgrinder first. The only reason we think they’re empowered by the end is because any access they once had to their own personal power has been ground out of them inch by inch until the thing setting its hooks in them has enough of them in there to really start yanking.
Both Dani and Thomasin are traumatized into states of total compliance, then offered things that seem like options, seem like real choices, but their ability to say no has been cut away from them, and there’s no such thing as an enthusiastic and consenting yes in those circumstances. (Thomasin still has her mother’s blood on her clothes when Black Phillip makes his offer; you think she wants butter and fine dresses?) Those films are the equivalent of burning buildings and they’re both launching themselves from the thirty-fifth floor. It’s weird being in the crowd of onlookers below overhearing how graceful they look.
