Rethinking Ari Aster

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.

Very few directors manage to break the bank in the horror genre, many of tried (looking in your direction Eli Roth) and while they eventually claim cult status (looking at you again Eli Roth) they don't really receive the critical acclaim as people who really manage to penetrate the horror genre. Ari Aster has managed to do that through "Hereditary", and again while I think the movie sucks, I can openly admit that it's tapped into something much stronger than I am and for that, I can respect it. But Ari Aster has seemed to figure out something different in the horror genre and that's "tragedy horror". The Tragedy genre is nothing new as many plays relied on tragedy as a source of drama since the days the Greeks (looking in your direction Oedipus) but tragedy as horror is something rather unique. "Hereditary" seemed to constantly play on tragedy as Toni Collette's character's life is mired in tragedy and then a tragedy befalls her own family in the form of losing Charlie and that seems to be Ari's go to, e.g. characters who suffer tragedy. In the case of "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" here you have a seemingly average family and then its revealed that the son rapes the father, which is not only disturbing but tragic in how the story unfolds resulting in the mother having to kill her son to save her life.

"The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" didn't rely on anything supernatural to make the story work, it relied on subverting our expectations and giving us disturbing food for thought (e.g. the reveal that the son was masturbating to a picture of his father) in making an awkward moment so much more than awkward. "The Johnsons" as I'll refer to it now since I'm tired of typing the entire title out, is set up better than "Hereditary" because The Johnsons seem perfectly normal on the outside, and that's the main problem I had with "Hereditary", in "Hereditary" everything was gloomy and depressing from the get go, we didn't miss anything in "Hereditary". And this is the same point I made in my review and not to re-hash it, but if Toni Collette's character was this amazing, warm, loving mom who loved her kids HARD, the complete 180 her character made would be that much more tragic. If Peter was a guy who loved and cared about his sister and we had scenes of them playing together and he wasn't a stoner, seeing the mental decline of his character and his eventual possession would seem more tragic. In "The Johnsons" we actually see who The Johnsons could have been and we see the decline.

Ari Aster in the case of "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" seems to understand how to write tragedy and with that he's worth another look and "Midsommar" looks like it's gonna be another one of those films similar to "Hereditary" but a couple of things catch my eye: this will take place entirely in the day time (having a horror movie occur during the day is extremely rare to almost unheard of) and for the most part this will occur outside, second this doesn't look like a horror movie. From the trailer this movie seems to have a "Wicker Man" vibe but that's probably the most obvious comparison to be made and I won't labor it. "Midsommar" seems to tell the tale of a boyfriend and girlfriend duo who with a group of friends attend a festival in Sweden (the aforementioned and eponymous Midsommar).

However, you can tell that the group of friends don't exactly care for the girlfriend of the relationship (Dani) as they've been encouraging the boyfriend of the relationship to break up with her and have voiced their disapproval of Dani attending the festival with them. It looks like some sort of cult ritual is going on and it looks like Dani is the only one aware of the strangeness of it all and will somewhere later on in the film get disfigured by means yet to be explained. Someone in the comment section of the trailer said that this movie looks like it'll take on the horror of relationships and again, this isn't exactly the stuff if nightmares. We'll see. Either way, I doubt this will be scary or disturbing in the slightest if it's anything like "Hereditary" but I will be keeping an eye on Ari Aster just because I'm waiting for him to surprise me. I'll be keeping an eye out for "Midsommar". Catch you guys later.