Okay, listen, I still think "Hereditary" sucks, let me be clear, the performances are great, the directing and cinematography is great, and aside from the wasted use of Gabriel Bryne, I'd say overall "Hereditary" is a technically sound movie through and through, but just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good and the story could have been told A LOT better, the characters could have been a lot stronger, especially Peter but unfortunately he turned out to be your typical high school senior obsessed with girls and smokin' pot, so when the bad thing happens to the poor boy you can hardly say it was that bad as the boy barely had character, to begin with. But I digress, all of these are issues I had with "Hereditary" and I'll be happy to discuss them with anyone but I'm not here to talk about "Hereditary", not entirely anyway, I'm actually here to talk about its writer and director, Ari Aster. Very few in Hollywood can claim both writer and director of their own projects and usually, when that happens it typically means the studios has quite a bit of faith in them.
"Hereditary" despite my best understanding has somehow managed to become a massive cult hit, and while I'm not the only one who doesn't like the movie, I'm the only one (that I'm aware of) who doesn't like the movie because of the story and how its told. But I digress, so Ari Aster's next film "Midsommar" which does look interesting enough to warrant my observation as details emerge is now on everyone's radar as being the next cult hit. So I wanted to take a look at Ari Aster's available body of work and stumbled upon his film "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" and this began my rethinking of Ari Aster. I'll explain what I mean after the break. Spoilers of "Hereditary" and "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" below.
