You get so lost in the making of a film, and you get so fixed on just, like, every tiny detail. If something doesn't hit the bullseye in the way you wanted, you become obsessed with that, and you get so just lost in that maze of neurotic thinking.
— Ari Aster
The nice thing about a horror movie is that people go in looking to be unsettled.
If people felt that they were misled with 'It Comes at Night,' they should know that the marketing here is deliberately misleading you in an honest way, in that we're not hiding what isn't there: we're hiding what is there.
A great horror film works as a communal experience more than almost anything else, except for maybe a comedy. That's something that I've experienced, just taking this movie around and watching it with audiences.
In some ways, the audience becomes complacent when they go to a horror film. And so it's fun to take that attitude and then to upend it.
With 'Hereditary', I wanted to make a film about what bothers me about life.
For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.
I love Lars von Trier. 'Dogville' is my favourite movie of the last 20 years. 'Nymphomaniac' and 'Melancholia' aren't quite as exciting as 'The Kingdom', 'Breaking the Waves', or 'The Idiots', but I'll always love him for being him.
The beauty of the horror genre is that you can smuggle in these harder stories, and the genre comes with certain demands, but mostly you need to find the catharsis in whatever story you're telling. What may be seen as a deterrent for audiences in one genre suddenly becomes a virtue in another genre.
A betrayal in a family is much more devastating than a betrayal among friends, or even lovers.
I really feel like the horror genre is capable of so much. Especially as an in-theater experience, something you watch with other people. It can do so much.
The joy of making a genre film is that you have audiences in that place, and it's a perfect place to start because all it takes is finding ways to startle them out of that complacency and encourage a different kind of engagement.
I enjoy turning things on the audience. I really like working in genre because people come into the films with certain expectations. They know the tropes so well that, when you turn on those, it can be shocking because there's a complacency that comes with watching those films.
The way I work is, I always compose a shot list before I talk to anybody, including my DP. So I'll spend a couple months basically creating the movie in my head, so I have a very solid film in my head, where I know every shot, and I know what the transitions between scenes are.
I don't necessarily consider myself a horror filmmaker.
When I was 13 years old, I was obsessed with horror films. I even had, like, a binder that I filled with badly copied images from the Internet of, like, 'Pinhead and Basket Case.'
It's easy for me to write a horror movie about real stuff because my mind is always going there anyway.
I graduated from the American Film Institute in 2010, where I studied as a director, and came out with a few features I really wanted to make.
Most horror films are made very cynically, and they're usually made by studios for an audience that they know is there, no matter what they put out. And there are always exceptions - every year, it seems we have a great one coming out.
The next film I'm making is a horror film, and I'm making it with A24. It's a dark break-up movie that becomes a horror film, set in Sweden. That's all I can really say now. It's called 'Midsommar.' Everybody's been spelling it wrong. It's 'midsummer' in Swedish.
I'm very fortunate in that my parents are artists. My mom is a brilliant poet... She still is a great visual artist. My dad is a jazz drummer... I've been very fortunate in that I've had parents who supported and encouraged me and haven't really questioned what I'm doing or asked me to question it.
I know that I put a lot into 'Hereditary', and I'm proud of what it is. Beyond the fact that the film takes its time and asks for a certain amount of patience from the audience - and I hope it rewards that patience by the end - I know that I'm something of an aesthete. I care about aesthetics, and I love filmmaking.
'Hereditary' is unabashedly a horror film. In a lot of ways, it's in dialogue with other horror films. But I do know that it was important for me that the film functioned first as a family drama. I know that I'm never affected by anything if I'm not invested in the people to whom the genre things are happening.
Jewishness is a very big part of my identity. I am a proud Jew, I would say, who doesn't practice very actively.
I found that the things I am afraid of most are things for which there are no obvious remedies. Like, what do you do with a fear of death? You either come to terms with it or you don't, but there's no solving it.
I love Cronenberg so much, especially the films he was doing in the mid to late '80s and early '90s, like 'Naked Lunch' and 'Dead Ringers'.
I love the horror genre. I consider myself a genre filmmaker. I love genre, but I think there's a certain amount of complacency that comes with watching a genre film; people know what the devices are. They know what the tropes are. They know the conventions.
I have more fun talking about other movies than talking about my own.
The idea of witches has always scared me because of the idea that there are Machiavellian forces out there that conspire to hurt others. There are people who do not have your best interest at heart and are actively willing to do harm to you and actively sending energy in that direction.
I know a lot of people who hate the ending of 'Rosemary's Baby' and wish that it was left ambiguous.
'Hereditary' is unabashedly a horror film, whereas 'It Comes at Night' was a lot of things: it was a thriller; it was a postapocalyptic drama. It was a slow-building, very dark movie about relationships. 'Hereditary' is also about relationships, and I hope it functions as a vivid family drama, but it is also very much a horror film.
I can say that I put a lot of personal feelings into 'Hereditary', though I can also say that none of the characters in the film are surrogates for anybody in my family or for myself.
I like to play with transgression and upending conventions, and I like the idea of rooting genre films in character.
My films typically veer towards the darker side, and I enjoy turning things on the audience. I really enjoy working in genre because people come into the film with certain expectations, and they know the tropes so well that when you turn on those, it can be really shocking. There's a complaisance that comes with watching those films.
I got my MFA from AFI as a director in 2010. I've had time to make the shorts that I made previous to 'Hereditary' and to kind of build these movies in my head.
There's been a lot of aesthetically rich horror films that have come out in the last several years. 'The Babadook' is this perfectly paced, beautiful film. 'The Witch' is a beautifully made film. 'Get Out' is so intelligently written. I feel like there's so many great things happening right now.
Every single moment in 'Hereditary' is linked to a moment in the end for the payoff. I think it has the ability of captivating people the same way that 'Manchester By the Sea' did. It has that audience because it's so wrapped in human drama.
One reason I think I am able to work with such dark material is the fact I was never really discouraged from making this kind of work.
These are films that I really love, but I would say I'm not somebody who runs out to every horror film. I avoid most of them. I feel like a lot of them are made very cynically.
Sometimes you want pain to be acknowledged and not whitewashed - or erased by some exceptionalist point of view.
Filmmaking is so much about catharsis anyway. It's therapeutic.
I'm very impressed by films like' Whiplash' or what Fincher does, where you get all these different... Where you get all this coverage that's perfectly linked up. I actually find coverage very confusing. But I love sequencing shots because I know exactly where I am.
My first experience in a movie theater was Dick Tracy. There was a scene with a guy with a Tommy gun and a wall of fire behind him. I panicked, screamed, and jumped out of my seat. And I ran six New York city blocks, running into the street and almost got hit by a bunch of cars and had my mom chasing after a panic-stricken four-year-old.
