Ari Aster's disturbing and boundary pushing sophomore movie, Midsommar, was almost slapped with an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, which is not really surprising, but managed to get away with an R rating of its final cut.
Midsommar is a cerebral folk-horror movie which was released in 2019 to shocked audiences across the world. After the wild success of Aster's first film, Hereditary, horror audiences thought they could predict what to expect from the director after the shocking twists, turns, and violence in his debut movie. However, Midsommar fearlessly adapted folk horror elements and a dream-like, idyllic setting in Sweden where a group of Americans go to visit the ancestral commune of a mutual friend during their traditional midsummer celebrations.
Midsommar certainly earned its R rating, so much so that it's difficult to think of what could possibly been more explicit to have caused the MPAA to originally issue it an NC-17 rating. Many horror films in the past have been subjected to this undesirable rating, which is almost guaranteed to hurt movies at the box office unless edits are made and the rating can be lowered. For this reason, after an NC-17 rating is issued to a film, directors often have to make edits to amend a film's final product so it can release with an R rating. Midsommar managed to achieve this R rating, and ended up grossing $47.8 million at the box office on a budget of only $9 million. Aster's film was likely much more successful after achieving its desired rating, and likely only had to make a few edits to achieve the theatrical cut.
Why Midsommar Was Almost Rated NC-17
According to Aster, who spoke to fans about the movie on Reddit, there was a lot of "back and forth" between him and the MPAA over Midsommar's rating. Certainly a more intense R rated film, Midsommar holds the rating as it stands for "disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language". There's not a lot of room for adjustment there, which begs the question as to why it got an NC-17 rating, and what was cut or edited out to bring it down to a more manageable R. According to Aster's AMA on Reddit, the debate with the MPAA over the rating for Midsommar lasted for six weeks.
The reason why the film was given an NC-17 rating has to do with the graphic nudity and sexuality in the film, most specifically with the sex scene toward the film's ending with Christian (Jack Reynor) and the full-frontal male nudity that is on display during. Reynor has stated that he was completely committed to the nudity that the scene required, and even was comfortable going further. Robert Eggers pitched an NC-17 idea for The Lighthouse due to an interest in depicting an erect penis in his film, but was asked to make changes before filming. It makes sense how something similar posed a threat to Midsommar's rating, as graphic nudity and sexuality is still heavily restricted and censored in theatrically released films.
The scene in question does put Christian in a very vulnerable position - drugged, sexually violated, and put on display - in ways that are not common for male characters in horror films. Even with the edits, the scene was just as effective without any sort of gratuitous exposure and got the point Aster was trying to make across in a way that still allowed them to have the accessibility offered by an R rating. Even with the lower rating, Midsommar was genuinely shocking and brutal, and Aster has since released a director's cut of the movie that adds almost 30 minutes, turning the 147-minute theatrical version into a 171-minute experience.