The Big Picture · Interview
June 8, 2018/ 25 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey talks to writer-director Ari Aster about 'Hereditary,' the horror films that scarred him as a kid, and the last great things he's seen.
14 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
In conversation
Aster's debut, pitched to his crew not as horror but as 'a family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare.' The original cut ran three hours; roughly 30 scenes were cut for pace. Toni Collette plays a miniaturist matriarch, so the house interiors were built on a stage and duplicated in miniature.
The De Palma film that troubled Aster at 11: its images kept him up for years, afraid to walk around in the dark. On a recent rewatch he found it campy and 'deeply, deeply sad.'
The first movie his mom took him to see; a Tommy-gun scene made him bolt out of his seat and run down five city blocks. He now reads it as high-level camp: a devoted, built-world comic-book aesthetic.
Offered as a modern comic-book movie that's fun and bright, but achieved in CGI rather than the tactile world Dick Tracy built.
Peter Greenaway. Traumatized Aster as a kid: 'It feels evil to me.'
Another film whose images seared into him: the same low hum of dread he wanted in Hereditary.
Screened for the Hereditary crew. Its turn about 30 minutes in, which changes the family and the movie, is what Aster was after; he likens the mechanism to Psycho.
The structural comparison for In the Bedroom's mid-film swerve; Aster notes Hereditary has 'our shower scene.'
People liken Hereditary to it via Collette; Aster sees them as superficially similar opposites: the Shyamalan film is hopeful and nice by the end, while Hereditary aims to upset.
Aster's short, where he first did some of the practical effects work that carried into Hereditary.
Andrew Haigh. Aster calls it 'an all-timer' and 'a perfect film,' has seen it many times, and screened it for the Hereditary crew.
Named as another Andrew Haigh film (Fennessey notes Haigh had recently been on the show for it).
Wes Anderson. Aster falls on and off the Anderson wagon but found this 'staggering as an aesthetic achievement.'
Lynne Ramsay. Aster loves how pulpy it is and how it gets at PTSD; praises the editing, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jonny Greenwood's score.
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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