‘Midsommar’ and ‘Cats’ Kinda Have the Same Plot and I Don’t Like It One Bit

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Midsommar. And, I suppose, spoilers for Cats. But I’m guessing you really only care about the Midsommar part.

After some confusion, Midsommar is finally streaming on Amazon Prime. (The streaming platform had originally planned on a January 3 release date for the horror film, which was pushed to January 10, leaving fans of Ari Aster feeling a bit like Florence Pugh after she sees her boyfriend having sex with a young Swedish girl.)

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about the fact that—and I’m so very sorry about this next clause—the plot of Midsommar is distressingly similar to the plot of Cats. I know. I know. If it helps, I intentionally avoided the claws/clause pun, in an effort to make this terrible mews easier to swallow.

It’s hardly a spoiler to say that Midsommar, written and directed by the man who brought you Hereditary, is about a murder cult. It’s pretty obvious from all the paintings of people getting murdered that we see in the first half of the film. Plus, when you’re watching a movie from Ari Aster and it takes place at a Swedish festival that happens every 90 years? Yeah, that’s a murder cult.

You might be more surprised to learn that Cats, both the musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the nightmare film adaptation directed by Tom Hooper, is also about a murder cult. This is not because the murder-cult aspect of Cats is a clever reveal that comes at the very end—it’s because the plot of Cats is so deeply incomprehensible, it’s impossible to know what’s happening in any given scene. And Hooper’s additions have, somehow, made it even more confusing.

For those who skipped seeing Cats in theaters, first of all, you made the right decision. But here’s the basic gist: The main character is named Victoria (played by Francesca Hayward), a white cat abandoned in the street by her family. Victoria finds herself adopted by the Jellicles, a group of alley cat misfits. The Jellicles tell Victoria about the Jellicle Ball, an annual ceremony where the cats compete for the opportunity to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn. In other words, the cats are fighting over who gets to die in a ritual sacrifice.

Victoria does not win the Jellicle Ball, but she does perform an impressive solo ballet number. The Jellicle cat matriarch, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) assures Victoria that she will someday be a Jellicle. Old Deuteronomy, who is the one in charge of choosing who gets to die, ultimately picks another old cat, Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), after she sings a song about how old she is. After Grizabella ascends, Victoria is finally welcomed into the cult of the Jellicles as a new member.

Now Midsommar is not exactly the same plot, but there are some key similarities here, particularly when it comes to the two films’ protagonists. Dani (Pugh), like Victoria, is abandoned by her family: Both her parents and sister die in a horrible murder-suicide. She tags along with her boyfriend and his friends’ trip to Sweden, where a strange commune, the Hårga, is gearing up for a midsummer festival that happens every 90 years. It’s soon revealed that the Hårga ritualistically murders its eldest members when they reach the age of 72. Siv (Gunnel Fred ), the elder in charge of this murder-ritual, explains to Dani that this how the cult views life and death.

The next day Dani participates in and wins the festival’s maypole dancing competition. She’s crowned the new May Queen, and, as more human sacrifices are made (including her own boyfriend) she is accepted into the Hårga.

Here are some other various and deeply upsetting similarities between Cats and Midsommar I noticed: Rebel Wilson unzips her skin in Cats, while the kid from We’re the Millers gets his skin cut off in Midsommar. The cats in Cats have human faces that are surrounded by CGI fur, which is not dissimilar to the way Jack Reynor’s face looks when it’s stuffed into a bear suit. Just before the Jellicle ceremony, Taylor Swift gets the cats in Cats high using catnip, much like how the cult in Midsommar drugged all of its victims before assaulting and/or sacrificing them.  Also, both films have a tap-dance number on a train track sung by Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat. Wait, no, sorry, that last one was just Cats.

The key difference here, of course, is that Midsommar is a beautifully shot horror film intended to disturb, while Cats is a cinematic mess of a musical movie that is intended to… well, to be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what Cats was trying to do. Inspire us? Move us? Arouse us? Who really knows. But ultimately Cats did disturb most of its viewers, as the many tweets and reviews have attested.

All I know is that I’ve been cursed with the knowledge that Cats and Midsommar are kinda, sorta the same movie, and now I’ve cursed you with this knowledge, too. I’m so sorry. Anyways, if this hasn’t totally ruined the experience for you, you can now watch Midsommar on Amazon Prime. 

Where to stream Midsommar