WATCH IF YOU DARE
Scary movies start with scary screenplays. This much is evident when I talk to writer/ director Ari Aster about his new film Hereditary.
That scene where Toni Collette talks to her character’s son, and there is no noise at all except their voices? “That was in the script that there would be no room tone,” Aster says, referring to the background noise we take for granted until it disappears like a phantasm.
“I thought that would work when I was writing it, and I’ m really pleased with how well it works. I think in the script it says, ‘It’s as though they’re speaking in a vacuum.’ People aren’t used to watching a film without room tone … (they) become very uncomfortable with any movement or any noise that they might be making. Everything gets heightened.”
What about those images where the camera won’t look away? Also also in the script. “It’ll often say: We hold on this just a little too long,” says Aster.
He alludes to some tragedy in his own background. “Writing and directing the film was a very therapeutic process for me,” he says. “And what’s great about the horror genre is that it demands a certain level of catharsis, so you have to find the catharsis in the story you’re telling. “And life often doesn’t have that catharsis. It’s often just a gruelling stretch of suffering. Or it can be. I wanted to make a film that took suffering seriously, that was a serious inquiry into questions about grief and trauma while also hopefully serving as a satisfying genre film.”
And he’s happy with every jolt it delivers.
“Isn’t that why people are watching a horror movie in the first place?” he asks. “There’s this collective, unspoken dare. They’re coming in and they’re daring the filmmaker to scare them or to bother them, and ultimately the filmmaker is daring you to sit down and brave whatever this is going to be.”
Aster is adamant he’s not a horror filmmaker, despite this first feature and its followup, Midsommar, which Variety refers to as “an esoteric folk horror film based on Swedish midsummer traditions.” That’s in pre-production now. “I have 10 scripts that I’ve written,” he says, “and that’s the only other horror film that I have. I do consider myself a genre filmmaker. I love genre; I hope to root everything I do in a place of characters. I want to make characterdriven, character-centric genre films.”
For instance, he wants to shoot a musical one day. “And I have a sci-fi film that I’m writing right now.”
What about a western? “I do have a western.”