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Ari Aster | Hereditary | Film Comment Talk

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20 Questions with Ari Aster and Gregory Crewdson

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Ari Aster shares tells us about the breakup that inspired him to write 'Midsommar' | Your Morning

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30 Years of The Film Foundation: Martin Scorsese and Ari Aster Conversation Clip

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Exclusive: ‘Midsommar’ Director Ari Aster and Stars Preview the Highly Anticipated Horror Flick

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Ari Aster on Midsommar, Cathartic Endings, the Director's Cut, and His Favorite Films

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idsommar is an agonisingly lovely horror film about four American students bungling an invite to a pagan celebration in Sweden. It is highly likely to give you nightmares. The film's writer/director, Ari Aster, is currently having one of his own: battling reporters determined to discover his own demons. "I'm cripplingly neurotic when it comes to these interviews," he says. "For me, these are just total minefields."

Hereditary, his breakout debut from last year about a miserable family, featured two beheadings and a sobbing Toni Collette literally climbing the walls. People sensed that this soft-spoken, charmingly awkward young film-maker might have been inspired by a past he didn't want to share. After much grilling, Aster has learned to reveal small intimacies (a stutter when he was young, a solitary childhood) while palming the truly personal.

Hereditary was the first horror script he wrote. Midsommar - inspired by a breakup - is the second. It is wickedly hilarious, yet clarifies the impression that Aster approaches movies like a skilful butcher, flaying his own neurosis to present audiences with quivering raw meat that could be his heart - or maybe, one fears, their own.

The film opens with a college girl, Dani ( Florence Pugh), losing her parents and sister to an incomprehensible tragedy. Even before this, her relationship with her longterm boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), was shaky. Christian's mates - Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter) - pester him to break up with her; instead, he invites Dani to tag along on a boys' holiday to their friend's home in Hälsingland, a flower-strewn paradise with a few fatal customs.

Aster on the set of Midsommar with Florence Pugh. Photograph: Merie Weismiller Wallace

It was Dani with whom Aster most readily identified. "I've certainly been in her position many times, where I am clinging to something that's dead because I'm not done with it," he says. Aster was eager to hone Pugh and Reynor's hostile, unspoken dynamic. The actors were instructed to cook meals in character, as well as to field questions about their feelings as if he were their couples therapist.

As for the anthropology, Aster spent months researching Scandinavian and Germanic myths and traditions, touring museums and ancient farms and studying plants, paintings and Viking torture techniques. Drug-induced hallucinogens, gory prosthetics and a particularly ripe herring are also thrown into the mix.

Aster likes films that disturb. At four, he had his first cinematic experience, seeing Dick Tracy. When the tommy guns started blazing, he fled. "My mom had to chase me down 10 New York city blocks [while I was] just screaming my head off."

A few years later, the family moved from Manhattan to Chester, in the UK, where his father opened a jazz club. Aster liked Chester, but at 10, the family relocated again, to New Mexico, upending, he says, his stability.

He dealt with the culture shock by diving into film. He admired blockbuster auteurs such as Tim Burton, and rhapsodises about Batman Returns. "It's this work of bizarre Hollywood expressionism!" By 11, he had watched A Clockwork Orange and Blue Velvet, and hated them both. "They felt really mean," he says. Yet, he watched them over and over to make sense of why they rattled in his brain. "I developed a taste for mean-spirited storytelling," he says. He spent his youth alone, writing scripts. He couldn't bear to make something amateur. "I knew I didn't have the actors or the lighting equipment," he says. "It was maybe indicative of a larger arrogance."

My mom had to chase me down 10 New York city blocks. I was screaming my head off

Eventually he made it to graduate film school at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where his first film deliberately provoked the AFI's sensible tastes. "What's the worst thing I could do here?" he asked himself. "And I was like: 'What about a son molesting his father?' Nobody should do that. So then it became an exercise - can I make that compelling?"

He could. The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, a 30-minute incest melodrama about a twenty-something man who, even after his own wedding, continues to abuse his dad, is stunningly confident film-making. And if viewers listen closely, they can hear Aster's voice as a motivational speaker who warns: "Horrible things happening to people is inextricably linked to people thinking horrible things might happen to them."

That muffled caution might capture his career to date. Not that he has outrun his fears. Shooting Midsommar in Budapest, Aster was so paranoid about ticks that he wore green knee-socks and a netted safari hat. "I'm a neurotic Jew and I'm afraid of Lyme disease," he says. "It was very embarrassing, but I cared more about my peace of mind than being fashionable on the set."

Now, he says, he's done with horror. "Everything else I've written is in a different genre. I love musicals. I love romantic comedies. I would love to do animation." Then he leans forward to show me a sketch on his phone, of what looks like a parrot beak bursting through a bashed-in head. That horror bug is hard to kill.

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Midsommar director Ari Aster: 'I often cling to dead things'

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idsommar is an agonisingly lovely horror film about four American students bungling an invite to a pagan celebration in Sweden. It is highly likely to give you nightmares. The film's writer/director, Ari Aster, is currently having one of his own: battling reporters determined to discover his own demons.

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Highest Rated: 100% Midsommar: The Director's Cut (2019)

Lowest Rated: 83% Midsommar (2019)

Birthday: Jul 15, 1986

Birthplace: New York, New York, USA

American director Ari Aster perfected his craft in short films before finally breaking through with his feature debut. A New York native, he studied fimmaking at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles. His thesis film, "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons" (2011), ended up becoming a viral sensation. The story stirred up controversy with its themes of incest and sexual abuse, and the director's decision to have the family at the center be African-American only added to the debate. He continued directing short films including "Munchausen" (2013), featuring Bonnie Bedelia, "The Turtle's Head" (2014), and "C'est La Vie" (2016). He garnered acclaim with his first feature-length film "Hereditary" (2018). Starring Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne, from a script by Aster, the horror tale centered around a family with a history of mental illness and disturbing deaths. It earned critical praise and was a surprise hit with audiences. He followed with the psychological thriller "Midsommar" (2019), starring Florence Pugh and Will Poulter.

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Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes

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Highest Rated: 100% Midsommar: The Director's Cut (2019) Lowest Rated: 83% Midsommar (2019) Birthday: Jul 15, 1986 Birthplace: New York, New York, USA American director Ari Aster perfected his craft in short films before finally breaking through with his feature debut. A New York native, he studied fimmaking at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles.

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Making his directorial debut in 2018 with Hereditary, Ari Aster's first film shares a striking theme with his 2019 follow-up film Midsommar.

In 2018, Ari Aster made his directorial debut with the supernatural horror film Hereditary. The following year, he released and established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the horror genre. While both films have drastically different plots, they share a common theme of loss and grief. These themes are introduced within the first ten to fifteen minutes of the films and serve as a catalyst toward the horror Aster's characters will undergo for the majority of the runtime.

Hereditary stars Toni Collette as Annie Graham, Alex Wolff as Peter Graham, and Millie Shapiro as Charlie Graham. The film opens up on Annie as she reads a eulogy at her recently deceased mother's funeral. Her mother was a central figure in raising Charlie and shared a very close relationship with her. One night, Peter attends a high school party and is forced by his mother to bring Charlie. Unknowingly, she ingests nuts and goes into anaphylactic shock. On route to the hospital, she leans her head out of the window as Peter drives. When he swerves to avoid an animal in the road, she is decapitated by a telephone pole.

Related: Midsommar: The Hårga Cult & Customs Explained

Aster's 2019 film Midsommar stars Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor, Jack Reynor as Christian Hughes, and Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle. Within the first ten minutes of the film, the audience is confronted with Dani's high anxiety over her sister's history with suicidal thoughts. Her partner, Christian, believes she is overacting over the messages her sister is sending her. Come to find out, her anxiety was warranted as Dani's sister took her own life as well as her mother and father's in the process. Dani lost every member of her family and only has Christian as comfort.

How Midsommar & Hereditary Connect Through Their Theme

The first major events that occur in both films are the loss of multiple family members. Without these tragic events, neither of the films would have the capability to move onward. When Annie's mother dies in Hereditary, it kicks off the matriarch's promise to the demon Paimon. Once Charlie passes, it sets Peter up to become the host body for the demon to inhabit, which is where the film ends. Paimon needs a male host body. While Charlie is not male, she was groomed by her grandmother to become the host. Once her spirit is free from her female form, it is able to enter Peter's to welcome Paimon.

In the aftermath of the Ardor family's demise in Midsommar, Dani is invited to celebrate the midsummer festival in Sweden with her partner and his friends. While Christian's friends hesistate at first, they are convinced to allow Dani to come due to the loss of her family. Without losing her family, she would not have ended up in Sweden. Furthermore, she would not have had the opportunity to become the May Queen and her friends would not have died in the process. Ultimately, Dani's family dying serves as a plot device to get her to the brutal end of the film.

Aster's films share more differences than they do similarities. Regardless, they rely on the same beginning to meet their tragic ends. Without the thematic use of loss and grief, neither film would be able to capture the horrific essence of their characters' endings. Hereditary and display the harsh realities of major losses with a supernatural twist that only Aster can masterfully capture.

More: Why Hereditary Is A Millennial Twist On Rosemary's Baby
About The Author

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Hereditary & Midsommar: How Ari Aster's Movies Share A Theme

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Making his directorial debut in 2018 with Hereditary, Ari Aster's first film shares a striking theme with his 2019 follow-up film Midsommar. In 2018, Ari Aster made his directorial debut with the supernatural horror film Hereditary . The following year, he released and established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the horror genre.

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Flower crowns and golden crowns are seen in both Misommar and Hereditary.

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Ari Aester takes beautiful, ideal, scenic locations and turns them into morbid, disturbed settings.

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Midsommar: Siblings ends her own life and the life of her parents.

Hereditary: Sibling accidentally morbidly kills sister.

The Strange Thing about the Johnsons: Son sexually abuses father.

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A year ago, Ari Aster put himself on the horror map with his feature debut, Hereditary, a film that divided critics and audiences and would become one of the most-talked-about genre films of 2018. Now Aster is unleashing , his follow-up offering, centered around a Swedish midsummer tradition that unravels into a psychological nightmare.

After receiving his MFA in directing from the American Film Institute Conservatory in 2010, Aster gained visibility from his thesis film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, a dark melodrama involving an incestuous relationship between a father and son. He went on to direct several shorts, among them Munchausen, a Pixar-inspired montage film starring Bonnie Bedelia and Rachel Brosnahan that featured a mother who makes her son sick because she doesn't want him to leave her and go off to college.

Amid post-production on Hereditary, Aster found himself already in pre-production on Midsommar. "It has been a crazy two and a half years, I haven't had time to process it," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. With two feature films in the can, the director has been hailed as a rising star in horror, though he has said he does not consider himself a horror filmmaker.

Directed by Aster from his original script, Midsommar stars Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor and Will Poulter, with cinematography by Pawel Pogorzelski, a returning recruit from Aster's previous jaunt and a fellow AFI graduate of the cinematography program.

Ahead of the film's release on July 3, THR spoke with Aster about his literary, cultural and historical influences, as well as the way he approaches his work with a sense of cynicism and a bleak sense of humor.
You've described Midsommar as a breakup movie that unravels into a folk horror nightmare. What are the serious relationship-themed fears that you felt compelled to explore within the framework of an existential horror film?
In a lot of ways, Midsommar and Hereditary are both existential horror movies. They're dealing with fears that have no real remedy; questions about death and whether you can really know the people closest to you. We open the film by having this woman be thrown into a very serious existential dilemma where she is rendered - in one fell swoop - an orphan, and inherent to the film's trajectory, the story is very much a fairy tale. At least, that's how I see it. I wanted to present a dynamic in which neither party is awful to the other one, but they're absolutely wrong for each other. By virtue of the fact that we're aligned very clearly with one character in the film, the other is immediately reduced to an antagonist. Even if you consider the extremes of the movie, he's sort of hinted as a villain despite the fact that most people should be able to put themselves in his shoes and have probably been in a relationship where they have been callous to the other person or created distance in a way that's not different from what Christian does in the film.
What sort of literary, historical and cultural references did you draw upon?
I did a lot of research into Swedish folklore and midsummer traditions, as well as traditions that have nothing to do with midsummer, [some] native to Germany and England. I especially did a lot of research into different spiritual movements, and those were in some ways the richest well that I drew from. Beyond that, I was thinking about different fairy tales and visual artists like Joel-Peter Witkin, who was on my mind when I was working with the prosthetics artist on the corpses. And I learned the runic alphabet.
Who are some lesser-known directors you admire and reference for their ability to provide psychologically jarring cinematic experiences that really say something about the human condition?
A director who was great with dramatizing the psychology of his characters was Joseph Losey; he deserves more credit. And he's not lesser-known, but I haven't really talked about him much - Alain Resnais is really good at finding a cinematic language for his characters' psychological states, especially through montage, but also through mise-en-scene. He's somebody who I have been thinking about a lot. I'm a big lover of melodrama, and I do see Midsommar as a contribution to that tradition of taking characters' inner states and then matching the world of the film to what's happening inside. It's tied to expressionism in a way. This is nothing new for me to point to [Michael] Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger or Douglas Sirk, but those are filmmakers that I'm always thinking about. I've also been thinking about John Sturges a lot lately. You know, a film that I've been thinking about a lot is one by Larisa Shepitko called The Ascent, which is a brilliant Russian film. Another filmmaker is Elem Klimov - I know a lot of filmmakers feel the same way I do about Come and See, which is a perfect movie. I also really love a film of his called Agoniya ( Rasputin), and I found myself thinking about that as well. It should also be mentioned that he and Shepitko were married.
As well as being a cinephile, you also consume art in a big way. Who are some artists that challenged you to consider the relationship between tone, color and story?
There were a lot of artists who I was thinking about when we were working on the production design of this film, and many were theosophical artists, just because I saw a lot of ties between theosophy and the world we were building here. Frantisek Kupka was one. When I came back to New York after shooting the film, there was an exhibition of Hilma af Klint, and she was incidentally someone who we were talking about a lot while we were developing the film. I mentioned Witkin earlier; he's a photographer who's very married to the macabre and works a lot with real corpses. Sometimes actors pose as corpses, but very often he works with [actual] dead bodies. He marries the beautiful with the grotesque in a really striking way. I also was able to commission a work from one of my favorite contemporary artists, Mu Pan, a modern [Hieronymus] Bosch. His painting opens the film; it's a mural on two wooden panels that open like curtains.
You've said that you don't identify as a "horror director" and that you don't have a specific mission as a filmmaker, though you do seem to be exploring a certain off-kilter tone and visual style that is memorable for its unusual qualities. Do you approach stories from a particular mindset or worldly perspective?
I approach many things with a certain cynicism, and I have a very bleak sense of humor. I see Midsommar as a dark comedy, if you really just consider the arc of Dani [Pugh]; there's something comic about where the movie ends. With these last two films, I did want to take suffering seriously, and for them to have a certain weight. And I definitely try to approach everything from a place of character, though if you go back to my shorts, that wasn't always true. I sometimes approached things in a more clinical way when I was playing with medium. I don't have a mission, as you said, but I'm compelled by images and tones. I find myself chasing feelings when I'm making films. I like the idea of telling stories through color; almost treating stories like music and feeling your way through it. (Pauses) It's very hard to expound without sounding like a bozo.
No, no, you're fine - we can move on.
Oh, I just remembered another filmmaker who I think is really great at depicting people's psychological states, and that would be Kim Ki-young, who did The Housemaid. He's a Korean filmmaker.
Great!
And Shohei Imamura is another filmmaker I really really love, especially his film Profound Desire of the Gods. He's great at mirroring high and low art, and he makes these elegant and immersive exploitation films that are beautifully considered and epic in scope. I think he was [Yasujiro] Ozu's assistant, and there's a tradition in Japanese cinema of filmmakers serving as other filmmakers protégés and then going on to explode what their mentors were doing. There couldn't be two filmmakers more unlike each other than Imamura and Ozu.
This seems like a good stopping point.
I'll regret not coming up with more.

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'Midsommar' Filmmaker Ari Aster Details His Influences

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A year ago, Ari Aster put himself on the horror map with his feature debut, Hereditary, a film that divided critics and audiences and would become one of the most-talked-about genre films of 2018. Now Aster is unleashing , his follow-up offering, centered around a Swedish midsummer tradition that unravels into a psychological nightmare.

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The "Hereditary" director's new nightmare looks like "The Wicker Man," but at its heart, it's a breakup movie with deeper ties to Albert Brooks.

Ari Aster wants to make one thing perfectly clear: "Midsommar" is a horror movie. The writer-director, whose elegant and soul-scraping "Hereditary" inflamed a semantic debate about the limits of its genre by daring to possess routine tropes with real trauma, is eager to get ahead of that whole conversation the second time around. Not that he can do anything to stop it.

When IndieWire recently sat down with the director in the basement of a Manhattan hotel, Aster knew full well that his latest film was certain to resurrect all of the same talking points. Another indelible nightmare that blurs the line between tradition and heresy in order to stir the unholy spirits that live inside our wounds, "Midsommar" begins with a premise that sounds almost perversely basic after the madness of "Hereditary." A grieving young American woman (Florence Pugh) joins her boyfriend (Jack Reynor) and his grad school chums on a trip to an isolated Swedish village that's celebrating a mysterious pagan festival that only happens once every 90 years. People start to die soon after they arrive.

It might as well be the plot of a "Hostel" movie, which is exactly what the idea was compared to when it was first pitched to Aster a few years back. And those trailers that made this feel like a millennial riff on "The Wicker Man?" They weren't trying to mislead you. "This is a contribution to the folk horror genre," Aster said emphatically. "I know the trajectory, I know how it works, and I was really excited about putting this movie in that skeleton and not doing anything to fuck with its spine."

Be that as it may, there's something about "Midsommar" that makes you question what it is that you're watching and squint at the screen; it's the brightest horror movie ever made, and it naturally comes with a bit of glare. Where many of the other movies that share its DNA tend to see the human body as a subject of suffering, Aster prefers to think of it as a vessel; for him, the scares are just a means to an end. As in "Hereditary" before it, "Midsommar" is less interested in how its characters die than in how they live with their pain. "The joy is not in subverting expectations," he said, "but delivering on expectations in a way that's both inevitable and also emotionally surprising. The fun of the folk horror genre is that you know exactly where it's going, and I didn't want to fight that."

For someone who can seem like a sui generis talent, Aster has no interest in reinventing the wheel. "I'm a cinephile," he said with just the right amount of shame that word requires. "I love movies. For me, the most exciting thing about being a filmmaker is being in dialogue with the films and filmmakers I love, and using the common language of the cinema to work through my own stuff and make something personal out of it."

"Midsommar" may be a folk horror movie that speaks to formative classics like "The Wicker Man" and "The Blood on Satan's Claw," but those aren't the films that Aster returned to when making his own contribution to their genre; instead, he went back to the stuff that had left the biggest stamp on him, no matter what kind of movies they were, nor if they had never been put into conversation with each other before. As a result, "Midsommar" feels like getting turned around in a neck of the woods that you've always known by heart, and there's nothing scarier than what you can find when you won't even admit to yourself that you're lost.

Here, Aster details nine movies that inspired "Midsommar."

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Ari Aster Breaks Down 9 Movies That Inspired 'Midsommar,' from 'The Red Shoes' to 'Climax'

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The "Hereditary" director's new nightmare looks like "The Wicker Man," but at its heart, it's a breakup movie with deeper ties to Albert Brooks. Ari Aster wants to make one thing perfectly clear: "Midsommar" is a horror movie.

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Ari Aster's debut movie Hereditary has been one of the most impactful horror movies of the 21st century. It is an unsettling story with shocking moments, building suspense, and some incredible performance that combine for an unforgettable experience.

RELATED: 5 Reasons Hereditary The Best Horror Film Of The 21st Century (& 5 Alternatives)

While it is certainly a unique bit of filmmaking, Aster has highlighted some past movies that helped to influence him when making Hereditary. From the horror elements that loom over the entire story to the equally disturbing family drama within the movie, Aster found inspiration in a lot of different movies that fans of Hereditary should check out.

10 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

When speaking to Den of Geek, Aster discusses Hereditary's place within the modern trend of "serious" horror movies, like Get Out and It Follows. However, he insisted past horror movies inspired him to deal with subject matter beyond scares and pointed to Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an example of social commentary in the genre.

The 1978 movie is a rare example of a remake that improves on the original. It is a paranoia-filled story of a community gradually taken over by an alien species that is able to make copies of people.

9 Cries And Whispers (1972)

Speaking to the human nature of the horror story, Aster told The Playlist that he considers Hereditary to be a story about grief and suffering. For that reason, he admits to screening Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers for the cast and crew as he felt it was the best movie on that subject.

The movie is set in Sweden during the early 20th century and centers on a woman who is dying of cancer. When she is visited by her two sisters, long-repressed feelings come to the surface in raw and painful ways.

8 Scenes From A Marriage (1973)

One of the most unique aspects of Hereditary is how the domestic parts of the movie are perhaps the hardest parts to watch. In the interview with The Playlist, Aster commented on how Bergman was so important to him and how another of his movies impacted these aspects of Hereditary.

Some fans might know Scenes From a Marriage as the recent HBO limited series starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. However, it was initially made by Ingmar Bergman as an intense drama about the love and turmoil within a relationship over the course of several years.

7 Onibaba (1964)

When speaking to Birth. Movies. Death, Aster admitted that he didn't want Hereditary to simply fit into one genre of horror movies but rather pay homage to a number of key subgenres as well. Among those, he specifically referenced the ghost story and pointed to the Japanese movie Onibaba as a standout of that kind.

RELATED: Top 10 Japanese Horror Movies, According To IMDb

The movie is set in the 14th century during a civil war. It follows two women who murder warriors and take their possessions to sell them for food. But the arrival of a mysterious samurai brings haunting discoveries.

6 The Innocents (1961)

Along the same lines of the ghost story influence, Aster told Birth. Movies. Death. that he wanted to make a movie that could fit in the same category as a movie like The Innocents while still telling a wider and different story.

The black-and-white thriller takes place in Victorian England and follows a governess taking care of two orphan children on their estate. But soon after arriving, she becomes convinced spirits are haunting the estate.

5 The Shining (1980)

There is a feeling of inescapable dread in Hereditary that looms over the entire movie. Aster told Birth. Movies. Death. that the movie that helped to influence that particular atmospheric feel was The Shining.

One of the most popular Stephen King adaptations, The Shining stars Jack Nicholson as a man who takes a job as a caretaker of a secluded and closed-down hotel. While staying there with his family, he slowly becomes consumed by the dark spirits residing there.

4 Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Along with the supernatural dread that hangs over Hereditary and the family drama at its center, there is also a dark conspiracy of people pulling the strings on this unsuspecting family. In that sense, Aster admits to TIFF that the obvious influence of Rosemary's Baby can be found.

The movie follows a couple who moves into a new apartment building. But soon the wife begins to suspect that the new neighbors have sinister plans in the work for them.

3 Don't Look Now (1973)

Another movie Aster mentioned to Birth. Death. Movies when speaking of Hereditary was the psychological thriller Don't Look Now. The movie also serves as an inspiration for Last Night in Soho and Aster sees it as another terrifying movie that still deals with grief in an effective way.

Don't Look Now stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a grieving couple visiting Venice when they begin to witness sightings of their deceased child around the city.

2 The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

When talking to Filmmaker Magazine, Aster said that, though it is not generally seen as a horror movie, Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a movie he kept referencing when making Hereditary and one that he sees as "evil."

RELATED: The 10 Most Interesting Horror Movie Plots From The 1980s

The haunting movie follows the titular group of people who come together at a gourmet restaurant which results in some shocking and destructive consequences.

1 Carrie (1976)

In the same interview with Birth. Movies. Death, Aster spoke of his disappointment with modern horror movies and his desire to make one that would not allow the audience to move on and would stay with them. For him, that movie when he was younger was Brian De Palma's .

Another Stephen King adaptation, it stars Sissy Spacek as the titular reserved high school girl. As she deals with being teased by her fellow students and mistreated by her overbearing mother, Carrie unlocks some terrifying hidden abilities.

NEXT: 8 Things That Still Hold Up Today In Brian De Palma's Carrie
About The Author

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10 Movies That Inspired Ari Aster's Hereditary

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Ari Aster's debut movie Hereditary has been one of the most impactful horror movies of the 21st century. It is an unsettling story with shocking moments, building suspense, and some incredible performance that combine for an unforgettable experience.

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Aster listed some of his favorite films as Rosemary's Baby, Fanny and Alexander, Persona, A Matter of Life and Death, 45 Years, A Brighter Summer Day, The Age of Innocence, The Piano Teacher, 8 1/2, and Repulsion.

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More recently, he signed a first-look TV deal with the studio A24.

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In June 2020, Aster said his next film would be a four-hour long "nightmare comedy". In February 2021, A24 announced Disappointment Blvd. as its third partnership with Aster. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix.

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Ari Aster and producer Lars Knudsen announced in June 2019 the launch of their new production company, Square Peg.

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Aster's next production, also with A24, was the folk horror film Midsommar. Aster received a nomination for Best Screenplay at the 29th Gotham Independent Film Awards.

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Aster made his feature film directorial debut with the horror-drama film Hereditary, which premiered on January 21, 2018. Hereditary was acclaimed by critics, with Collette's performance receiving particular praise, and was a commercial success, making over $80 million on a $10 million budget to become A24's highest-grossing film worldwide.[16] Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers called it the scariest film of 2018.

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Debut: short film Tale of Two Tims, which he wrote at College of Santa Fe and submitted to American Film Institute leading to a fellowship into the graduate directing program at the AFI Conservatory. Aster followed up with several AFI cycle films, along with comedic shorts made with industry friends like TDF Really Works in 2011. Aster then followed up with a breakout short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons

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Ethical: example- reduce carbon footprint
Principle: example- life without parents
Practical: example- found or town locations

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Country of origin / What audiences will come?

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What are the messages, themes, and texts?

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What's the conversation around the topic?

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Aster was born into a Jewish family in New York City on July 15, 1986, the son of a poet mother and musician father. He has a younger brother. He recalled going to see his first movie, Dick Tracy, when he was four years old. The film featured a scene where a character fired a tommy gun in front of a wall of fire. Aster reportedly jumped from his seat and "ran six New York City blocks" while his mother tried to catch him. In his early childhood, Aster's family briefly lived in England, where his father opened a jazz nightclub in Chester. Aster enjoyed living there, but the family returned to the U.S. and settled in New Mexico when he was 10 years old. As a child, Aster became obsessed with horror films, frequently renting them from local video stores: "I just exhausted the horror section of every video store I could find. I didn't know how to assemble people who would cooperate on something like that. I found myself just writing screenplays.”  In 2004, he enrolled at the College of Santa Fe, where he studied film. After graduating in 2008, he was accepted into the 2010 class of fellows at the AFI Conservatory graduate program, where he earned an MFA with a focus in directing.

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The Strange Thing About the Johnsons Trailer - Saxon Wood

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A dark domestic horror drama about the ties that bind and the ties that really bind.

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The Strange Thing About the Johnsons Trailer - Saxon Wood

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MIDSOMMAR Official Trailer (2019) by HEREDITARY director, Ari Aster Movie HD

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When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter and grandchildren begin to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry, trying to outrun the sinister fate they have inherited.

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MIDSOMMAR Official Trailer (2019) by HEREDITARY director, Ari Aster Movie HD

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A couple travels to Northern Europe to visit a rural hometown's fabled Swedish mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

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Ari Aster was born on July 15, 1986 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019) and Disappointment Blvd. (2022).

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Title: How Hereditary director Ari Aster became an unlikely horror hero - The Verge