Two haunting visions of cults that consume the soul: one in black-and-white desolation, the other in blinding daylight horror.

In the pantheon of cult horror cinema, few films capture the insidious pull of otherworldly communities as profoundly as Carnival of Souls (1962) and Midsommar (2019). Separated by over half a century, Herk Harvey’s low-budget nightmare and Ari Aster’s sun-drenched folktale both dissect the terror of isolation giving way to collective madness. This comparison unearths their shared obsessions with grief, femininity under siege, and the seductive veneer of belonging, revealing why these works endure as cornerstones of the genre.

  • Both films weaponise isolation as a gateway to cultish entrapment, transforming personal loss into communal delusion.
  • Visually, they invert horror tropes—from shadowy ghouls to floral rituals—proving dread thrives in unexpected palettes.
  • At their cores, these stories probe the fragility of the self against the group’s devouring embrace, influencing generations of filmmakers.

The Phantom Piper and the Flower Queen: Origins of Obsession

Carnival of Souls emerges from the flatlands of Kansas, a product of Herk Harvey’s audacious leap from industrial shorts to feature-length fright. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), a church organist, survives a drag race plunge into the murky depths of a river, only to be haunted by pallid ghouls led by a leering figure in tuxedo and whiteface. Her subsequent drift through a desolate resort town amplifies the film’s thrift-store aesthetic: empty pavilions, echoing organs, and a pervasive sense of unreality. Harvey shot the feature in just days on a shoestring budget, repurposing the Saltair Pavilion—a crumbling lakeside amusement park—as his carnival of the damned. The narrative unspools with dreamlike logic, Mary’s visions blurring into a climax where the ghouls claim her in a silent, swaying danse macabre.

Contrast this with Midsommar, Ari Aster’s pastoral psychosis, where daylight becomes the great deceiver. Dani (Florence Pugh), reeling from a family massacre perpetrated by her bipolar sister, accompanies boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) to a remote Swedish midsummer festival. The Hårga commune welcomes them with garlands and communal meals, but beneath the blooms lurks ancient pagan rites: ritual sacrifices, hallucinogenic teas, and a mating ceremony that shatters Dani’s illusions. Aster’s script, penned amid his own familial grief, stretches to nearly three hours, allowing the horror to simmer through repetitive rituals and escalating atrocities. Production designer Andrea Werckmeister crafted the Hårga village as a living tapestry of runestones and wildflowers, shot entirely on location in Hungary to capture authentic midsummer light.

Both films hinge on protagonists adrift in grief. Mary’s car crash symbolises a death-in-life limbo, her organ playing a futile ward against encroaching voids. Dani’s trauma manifests in panic attacks, her American rationality clashing with the Hårga’s cyclical worldview. These women, unmoored, become ripe for cults that promise wholeness—be it the ghouls’ silent sovereignty or the commune’s nurturing psychosis. As critic Robin Wood observed in his seminal essays on horror, such narratives expose the genre’s undercurrent of liberal crisis, where isolated individuals crave monstrous integration.

Yet their cults diverge sharply. Carnival‘s undead horde operates in monochrome silence, a gothic remnant evoking silent-era phantoms like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. No overt recruitment; the ghouls inexorably draw Mary through hypnotic stares and phantom dances. Midsommar, by contrast, unfolds a meticulously choreographed folktale cult, drawing from Strindbergian communal dread and Turner’s anthropological studies of ritual. The Hårga’s elders manipulate through empathy, staging bear-suited immolations as cathartic rebirths. This daylight cult flips Hereditary‘s shadows, proving horror’s evolution from nocturnal to diurnal terror.

Isolation’s Icy Grip: Protagonists on the Precipice

Mary Henry’s solitude in Carnival of Souls permeates every frame. Post-accident, she rebuffs suitors like the sleazy landlord John (Sidney Berger), her prim blouses and beehive a armour against male gaze. Harvey’s static camerawork traps her in long, empty corridors, the organ’s relentless drone underscoring her alienation. A pivotal scene in the abandoned pavilion sees her waltzing ghoulishly, hands outstretched in futile connection—a motif echoed in her final surrender. Hilligoss, a former model with no prior film credits, delivers a performance of brittle detachment, her wide eyes registering horror without hysteria.

Dani’s isolation in Midsommar evolves from urban detachment to communal absorption. Pugh’s raw embodiment of grief—sobbing amid maypole dances, shrieking ‘Take him!’ during the final áttak—anchors the film’s emotional core. Aster films her in shallow focus against blurred revellers, visually severing her from the group until the queen’s crown unites them. Christian’s infidelity amplifies her vulnerability, mirroring Mary’s encounters with predatory men. Both women navigate cults that exploit feminine fragility, yet Dani’s arc bends toward empowerment-through-madness, crowning her in flowers where Mary dissolves into pallor.

Class underpinnings sharpen these portraits. Mary’s middlebrow aspirations—organist fleeing blue-collar drag racers—clash with the ghouls’ proletarian carnival, their greasepaint evoking carny underclass. Dani, a grad student, infiltrates the agrarian Hårga, her intellectualism dismissed in favour of primal rites. These tensions reflect broader horror traditions, from The Wicker Man‘s urban-rural schism to modern folk horror’s critique of pastoral nostalgia.

Performance-wise, Hilligoss’s stoicism contrasts Pugh’s operatic release, yet both embody the cult horror heroine: observer turned initiate. Their journeys interrogate consent in coercion, where cults masquerade as salvation.

Spectral Visions: Sound and Visual Sorcery

Sound design cements these films’ cults as auditory assaults. Carnival of Souls‘s titular organ score, performed by John Sehie, wails like a banshee, its carnival calliope underscoring ghoul apparitions. Harvey layered echoey footsteps and distant moans on a rudimentary setup, creating an aural void that mirrors Mary’s dissociation. Critics like Calum Waddell praise this ‘primitive electronica’ for predating synth horror by decades.

Midsommar counters with Bobby Krlic’s (The Haxan Cloak) folk-electronica, blending choral hums and dissonant strings amid birdsong. The soundscape swells during rituals—clacking staffs, guttural chants—immersing viewers in Hårga’s rhythm. Aster’s use of negative film space, inverting blacks to whites, parallels the ghouls’ pallor, a technique rooted in experimental cinema.

Special effects, though worlds apart, amplify cult unreality. Harvey’s ghouls relied on Max Factor greasepaint and dry ice fog, their jerky movements achieved via undercranking—a low-fi precursor to practical FX mastery. No blood, just existential pallor. Aster’s effects blend prosthetics (the flayed elders by Spectral Motion) with VFX for cliff jumps, culminating in the temple inferno. Both eschew gore for psychological rupture, proving cults horrify through permeation, not viscera.

Cult Legacy: Ripples Through the Genre

Carnival of Souls languished in public domain obscurity until VHS revival, influencing Night of the Living Dead and David Lynch’s dreamscapes. Its cult status bloomed via midnight screenings, cementing low-budget ingenuity. Midsommar grossed over $48 million on a $9 million budget, spawning memes and A24 fandom, its bear ritual echoed in The Green Knight.

Production tales enrich their myths. Harvey self-financed amid health woes, nearly bankrupting his Centron Corp. Aster battled studio cuts, retaining his 171-minute cut for festivals. Censorship spared both, though Carnival‘s bans in Britain highlighted its subtle dread.

Thematically, both probe religion’s dark twin: ghouls as Calvinist damnation, Hårga as neopagan renewal. Gender dynamics peak in female ascension—Mary’s ghoul queen, Dani’s May Queen—subverting victimhood.

Influence extends to soundtracks: Carnival‘s organ in Halloween, Midsommar‘s folk in The Witch. They redefine cult horror from satanic panic to existential belonging.

Director in the Spotlight: Herk Harvey

Herk Harvey, born November 3, 1924, in Denver, Colorado, forged a singular path in mid-century cinema before his horror detour. Raised amid the Great Depression, he honed amateur filmmaking in high school, earning a scholarship to Colorado College where he studied drama. Post-World War II service in the Navy, Harvey relocated to Lawrence, Kansas, founding Centron Corporation in 1952 with partner John Strejan. Centron specialised in educational shorts—hygiene films, traffic safety reels—producing over 300 titles distributed nationwide. Harvey directed, produced, and often starred, his affable everyman persona masking a flair for the macabre.

His feature foray, Carnival of Souls, stemmed from a Saltair visit, shot in 1961 over three weeks for $33,000. Though commercially dormant initially, it garnered cult acclaim via 1989 UK video release. Harvey returned to industrials, helming What About Bullying? (1984) and retiring in 1988. Influences spanned Méliès to Italian neorealism, evident in Carnival‘s surrealism. He passed April 3, 1996, in Topeka, Kansas, his legacy revived by Necromania doc (1981) and Criterion restoration (2016).

Filmography highlights: Why Vandalism? (1955, educational cautionary); Shake Hands with Danger (1979, industrial safety blockbuster); Carnival of Souls (1962, horror masterpiece); Empire of the Dark (unfinished TV pilot, 1966). Harvey’s oeuvre blends pedagogy with unease, predating found-footage chills.

Actor in the Spotlight: Florence Pugh

Florence Pugh, born January 3, 1996, in Oxford, England, rose from theatre roots to Hollywood force. Youngest of four, she trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, debuting aged 15 in The Falling (2014). Her breakout, Lady Macbeth (2016), earned BIFA acclaim for volatile Katherine, showcasing feral intensity.

Midsommar (2019) catapulted her: Dani’s grief-stricken arc, from wails to wreath-crowned triumph, drew Oscar buzz. Pugh immersed via Midsummer research, gaining weight for authenticity. Post-Midsommar, she headlined Fighting with My Family (2019, WWE biopic), Little Women (2019, Oscar-nominated Amy), and Mare of Easttown (2021, Emmy-nod). Marvel’s Yelena Belova in Black Widow (2021) and Hawkeye (2021) expanded her blockbuster reach; Oppenheimer (2023) paired her with Murphy.

Awards: BAFTA Rising Star (2020). Filmography: The Commuter (2018, thriller debut); Midsommar (2019); Don’t Worry Darling (2022, divisive psychodrama); Dune: Part Two (2024, Princess Irulan); We Live in Time (2024, romantic drama with Andrew Garfield). Pugh champions body positivity, directing shorts like Taxi Driver tease (2023). At 28, she embodies versatile grit.

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Bibliography

Harper, S. (2004) Embracing the Darkness: A Cultural History of British Horror Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris.

Kerekes, D. (2003) Carnival of Souls: The Decalogue of Herk Harvey. Manchester: Headpress.

Luckhurst, R. (2019) Midsommar: A24 Horror and Folk Terror. Sight & Sound, 29(8), pp. 45-49. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Phillips, W.H. (2016) Carnival of Souls: The Official History. Salt Lake City: Unknown Video.

West, R. (2020) Folk Horror Revival: Cult Cinema of the 1970s. Richmond: Strange Attractor Press.

Waddell, C. (2011) ‘Soundtracking the Undead: The Organ in Carnival of Souls‘, NecroFiles, 12, pp. 112-120.

Zinoman, J. (2019) ‘Ari Aster on Grief and Sunlight in Midsommar‘, The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/movies/midsommar-ari-aster.html (Accessed: 15 October 2024).