The Big Picture - Hereditary’ Is the Most Disturbing Horror Movie in Years, With Ari Aster | The Big Picture (Ep. 69)

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with filmmaker Ari Aster to discuss his first full-length feature, ‘Hereditary,’ and the process of crafting a deeply disturbing experience for moviegoers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Try MUBI free for 30 days at mubi.com slash big picture. That's MUBI.com slash big picture for your extended free trial. When I was pitching this film, I was pitching it not as a horror film, or I wasn't using the word horror. I was describing it as a family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer,

and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world. I had a tough night in Texas a couple of months ago. I was in town for a film festival and I was getting a ride back to where I was staying. We were stopped at a red light, idling at three o'clock in the morning, and then bang, I was rear-ended by a reckless driver. It was terrible, that awful feeling of vague hurt that could mean long-term pain. But it was worse than your typical fender bender, not because I was far from home, and not because it was in the middle of the night,

miles from any living soul that I knew. It was particularly haunting because I had just left a midnight screening of the movie Hereditary. Hereditary is the most upsetting horror movie I've seen in years. I won't spoil much of it other than to say it starts out as a dark family drama

and it gets much, much darker. On today's show, I talked with the movie's writer-director Ari Aster about his long road to feature films and scaring the hell out of people. So here's my conversation, Ari Aster. Ari, thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me. Ari, your movie is very fucked up in a wonderful way. And I want to talk about the movie a lot.

But I want to hear a little bit about you and where you came from because I was not familiar with your work beforehand. And this movie hit at Sundance like a shot out of a cannon. And people had said, this is the scariest damn thing that I've seen in years. So where are you from and how did you start falling in love with movies that upset people? I was born in New York and I was there for the first few years of my life and then moved to Chester, England for a few years with my family.

And then I spent most of my adolescence in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And then I moved to LA to go to AFI, the AFI Conservatory, the American Film Institute, to study as a director. And I graduated in 2010, and I spent the last nine years in LA before Hereditary went into pre-production in Utah. I want to know what happens between that 2010 to 2017 period. But before we do that, do

you remember the first horror film that you saw? First one? No. I remember the first few that like really had a big impact on me. I, I, from, well, I'd say the ages of like, I'd say age 12 and 13, I was, I was just really, really obsessed with horror films. Like I would just exhaust the horror section in every video store. What was your preferred sub-genre of horror movie? Where did you lean towards? I really was looking, I think, for visceral. I was obsessed with the grotesque.

At the same time, I was getting into Joel Peter Witkin and, you know, and Ouija. And, you know, Ouija, the photographer, not the board. Well, I would be reasonable in this conversation, too. But I was always drawing like very morbid imagery. But there were a few films that really, really had kind of a devastating impact on me. And, you know, one of them was Ryan De Palma's Carrie. That one really troubled me. And it's funny because I saw it again recently,

and I was shocked at, like, how campy it was. And I see it now as, like, this very, very sad comedy, but, like, deeply, deeply sad, like a really— There is, like, a level of kitsch to it, too. It's also, like, so imprinted in pop culture now that we see these things happening that are referencing it so specifically. And so you can't – when you're 11, you just receive things so differently, right? Exactly.

And I think I've always been troubled by kitsch. And De Palma, I mean like De Palma is always kind of like skirting the edge. He's like – he's putting like one toe in kitsch. And I mean even with like Pino D'Onozio's score, which is like so sentimental, it's like dripping with sentimentality. It's like gross.

Like it's like really, it's really, it's beautiful, but then at the same time it's like, I don't know. It's very. It's melodramatic, right?

It's really melodramatic. How do your, how does your family feel about an 11-year-old Ari becoming obsessed with Carrie and really gory horror films? Well, with Carrie, I was less, I was obsessed with it, but I didn't like it.

I really regretted seeing Carrie because it was keeping me up for years, actually. There were images in that film that would not leave me. You know, like when you're walking in the dark and you're telling yourself so many times to not think about something that you're just like— Can't see. You're forcing yourself to project times to not think about something that you're just like – You can't see it. You're forcing yourself to project these images like onto these dark walls. So I couldn't deal with walking around in the dark because I couldn't get away from the images. I was like tormenting myself with them. My parents, I don't know how they felt about me loving horror films.

I was drawing a lot of morbid imagery and a lot of, like, you know, like, bodies being ripped apart by, like, tentacles and stuff like that. Wow. And it's funny because I actually don't really—it's been a while since I've been into horror films. And I don't really consider myself primarily a horror director. But back then, there was a clear trajectory, I would say. Back then, did you imagine yourself making movies when you were falling in love with those movies or being terrified by them? Yeah. I mean, it's always been what I've wanted to do.

My mom likes to tell a story about the first movie that she took me to go see in New York. I think it was Dick Tracy. And all I remember is that there was a scene where somebody's firing a Tommy gun with a wall of flames behind him. And I screamed and jumped out of my seat and ran down like five different city blocks in New York. My mom was chasing after me and I was just running in front of cars and almost got killed.

Wow, that also is a movie that plays a lot differently when you're an adult. If you see it as a kid, it's like, it feels not real, but there's something like hyper real about it. And then when you watch it as a adult, you're like, wow, this is high level camp. Like you really just, the colors yeah so violence and the dialogue and absolutely so campy and just like the the level of artifice there i don't know if there is if we have a

comic book movie that is that devoted to like kind of replicating the comic book aesthetic um thor ragnarok was pretty fun and bright but maybe not quite in the way that we're talking about. Well, yeah, because so much of that is also achieved in CGI, whereas Dick Tracy was kind of – I haven't seen it in so long, but I do remember being excited by how much of it was just like – was built, this fake – The whole world, yeah. They created a living comic book, right? Yeah. It's kind of amazing. It's interesting because that movie is all artifice, like you say. Your movie is not.

It's interesting, too, that you told me that you spent some time living in England because there's some austerity to the movie, too. There's something very tense. It's like a family drama. There's a little bit of 70s drama in the movie that you made. Tell me a little bit about the other movies that you started falling in love with when you were getting older

and maybe moving away from horror movies. Okay. And really quickly, I'll say that the other film that traumatized me as a kid was Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. I don't like it. I find it really upsetting, and it really did a number on me

when I was a kid. It feels evil to me. Those images are just seared into my brain. It's like you've been branded. Yeah. Well, that film branded me for sure. Another film that does that is Dogville, like really, really well. Your movie has something in common with all those movies, don't it?

There's something like slightly unnerving and off at all times that a low hum of dread even in Dick Tracy there's a little bit of a like is someone gonna blow someone's face off at any moment feeling yeah even though it's meant to be a comic book movie for 10 year olds um I don't know it's interesting that you hit on that so early yeah I it's funny because it's not like a mission for me you know like I've been asked a few times like you know why why is all your stuff so dark? Is everything going to be this dark? And I haven't even thought about it. It's just that's what – I mean, in the case of Hereditary, that's just what it was. But in the case of the shorts that I've made, it's, I guess, the same thing.

At AFI, did you have a sense of what kind of movies you wanted to make when you finished? Yeah. I mean, I was mostly making dark comedy, and that's still something. I mean, I still sort of see myself as being primarily a dark comedy filmmaker. I think that's where my heart is, really. So how does Hereditary start coming together for you then? Hereditary came together because I had, at that point I had written about nine feature scripts.

And I had. All different genres, all different approaches. All different genres. Yeah. To sell, to make. To make,

to direct. And there were a few that had, I almost got them going, but, you know, but they were either too big or for whatever reason, they didn't happen. Is this in this period, this 2010 to 2017 period? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And I – So what does someone like you do to live in that time? If you're not making the movie you want to make, are you waiting tables? Are you making commercials? Are you making short films? How does that work?

I was really burning through savings, and I was... At one point, I got paid to write a script, and that lasted me a couple years. I was doing everything I could to basically not take the jobs that would be a distraction. And Hereditary got going right when I needed it

to, at the point where I would have to shit or get off the pod. Did you know what the flip side of Ari's life would have been? If Hereditary doesn't happen, what are you doing right now? I don't know. I don't know if I'm waiting tables, but I spent about a year reading scripts at Universal,

and I don't think I would ever want to be a script reader again, although that was an education. But it worked out. It worked out by the skin of my teeth. And someone said, we'd like to give you money. You should make this movie. Well, it had traded hands a lot. So it was with one producer for about a year, and that fell through.

And then another production company came on, and it didn't quite work out with them. And it just kind of kept trading hands. But luckily, I had an agent, and luckily the script was gaining traction, and people knew about it, and it had something of a reputation. And then finally, it found financing. Tell me about making it because, as I said, there is an unnerving quality to most of the movie where we sense that there's something happening. So how do you build that on set? How do you build that into the story in a way that actually makes it work? The way I work or the way that I have worked thus far is that I compose a shot list before I talk to anybody on the crew. And so I spent a few months building a shot list

so that I had the whole movie in my head. And then I sit down with my cinematographer and my production designer, in this case, that's Pavel Pogorzelski, who I've been working with since AFI and who's one of my best friends. And he's just brilliant. And the production designer was Grace Yoon, who did an amazing job on this film.

And so we would just go for every day, we would sit down with a dry erase board and map out, you know, like, you know, an overhead view of what the space might be. And then I'll draw out for them what the blocking is and where the camera will be. I take them through the whole movie, which took about three weeks of us working like four or five hours a day on that. At that point, we all have the same movie in our head. Are you saying to them, maybe watch this movie. This is the tone I'm going for. Here are some reference points or is it all?

I actually screened a lot of films for them, and I was kind of careful to not screen horror movies. Like when I was pitching this film, I was pitching it not as a horror film or I wasn't using the word horror. I was describing it as a family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare. And so it was important that we address like the family drama before even thinking about the horror elements. And I'm screening them all for different reasons. But, you know, we watched a couple of Mike Lee films and Mike Lee is probably my favorite filmmaker. We watched In the Bedroom, which has a turn about 30 minutes in that isn't far, it's not dissimilar from something that happens in Hereditary.

Yep, something that changes a family. Yeah, and it changes the movie. It changes, the movie itself reveals itself to be something kind of unsafe. It's very similar to Psycho, actually. What In the Bedroom does. And I think what this film is trying to do.

Like, we have our shower scene. What was the most challenging thing about actually doing the movie? Because you're creating this family drama, but then there's also some genuine horror elements. These two story versions colliding. Were there technical challenges? Was it more like figuring out how to pace the movie?

What didn't you see coming? Well, the technical challenges were huge. So we have that shot list now, right, that I was describing earlier. And so now we have to find a house that accommodates that. And we scouted for a long time, didn't find anything. And then we realized that we would have to build the entire house on a stage. The exterior of the house, that is an actual location, but everything interior, the first floor, the second floor, the attic. Did you have to build that kind of treehouse as well? The treehouse was totally built. So the exterior was built on location, but the interior was built on the stage.

Okay. And we actually built two versions of the interior of the treehouse. So everything in that house was built from scratch. But because we then had to replicate all the spaces with the miniatures, because Toni Collette's character is a miniaturist who makes these dollhouses that are perfect replicas of the spaces that she lives in, or the spaces in her life. We had to have everything designed well in advance of shooting so that we could get those miniaturists going. That means we needed to know

what the furniture was, what the plants are in the room, what's the wallpaper, what are the drapes over the windows. It has to be perfect. It all has to match exactly. Exactly. You've got some also pretty intense

effect shots in the film. Is all of that stuff practically done? Everything that we could do practically, we did do practically. It feels like that for the most part in the movie. It feels very tactile. Well, thank you. That was really important to me. I love what CGI can do as an enhancement tool

and then to get rid of things that you need to make the practical stuff work, right? Because there's like wire work and then if you're lighting somebody on fire, you know, there are like hoses and there are things that are in frame that you need to remove. People have seen the trailer. They know someone gets lit on fire. Yes. It's okay. Did you like doing that stuff, that effects work?

Because I imagine in your short films you didn't have too much of that to do really. I did have some stuff in the short I made called Munchausen. It's always stressful because you don't know if you're going to achieve it. Like, it's, you know, it's all theoretical until the day. You overplan. Why Toni Collette is the matriarch in the story? I mean, she's somebody that I've really just, I've been watching her for a long time. And I really think that she's one of our most reliable actresses. And she read it,

she knew what the challenge was. She had the balls to take it on. Because I really think it requires like a certain lack of like vanity to take a part like this on. Absolutely. Did you like that there was a little bit of an echo with the Sixth Sense and that there's something, some low similarity between those two characters? Yeah, I mean, I like that. I wasn't thinking about that. And people have sort of likened this film to the Sixth Sense, and I sort of see it, but then I also feel like they're almost opposites.

They're superficially similar, but tonally completely different. Yeah. Well, I mean, The Sixth Sense, it's pretty hopeful by the end. It's a nice movie. So you're saying your movie is not nice or hopeful? No. No, I think Hereditary is really – it wants to be upsetting. It wants to be kind of alienating.

That's why I've been sort of surprised by The Reception. I've been really of surprised by the reception. I've been like really excited by it but it is a movie that aims to upset you. Like if it's working it should be a pummeling experience.

Can I share with you my theory about why that is? Yeah. Movies are very boring. People don't feel anything when they go to the movies anymore. Your movie really makes people feel things

especially in a communal way and they're really responding to that. I sensed makes people feel things, especially in a communal way, and they're really responding to that. I sensed it in the screening I was in. I think it's also one reason my horror movies are having a sustained moment for a time. But I don't know, do you get that sense that people are just like, you really had me gripping my chest the whole time?

Yeah, yeah. And it's been amazing. It's nice too because I was talking a lot about, you know, wanting to make a film that was, like, patient and that took its time and that, like, really kind of earned everything that happened. And, you know, the film, the original cut of the film was three hours long. And so there are, like, 30 scenes that are not in the film. And so I feel like when I talk about it as a family drama more than a horror film, that might be a little bit disingenuous now because I do feel like some of that was scaled back. Where does this movie come from? I imagine that there's some personal experience that goes into writing something that is so intimate.

So how do you make that into something that is for the world? Well, I think that's the beauty of not just the horror genre, but genre filmmaking, is that it's this beautiful filter where you can take something personal and then conform it to meet these demands. And the horror genre has very clear demands, and a lot of that has to do with catharsis. How close is Hereditary to the movie that you saw in your head? Well, it's shorter.

Or it's leaner. And I do think this cut is probably the best cut. Was it painful for you to have to winnow it down the way that you did? Yeah, it's always painful. But you have to do it. So every cut hurts. Every scene you remove, especially if you executed it in the way that you did? Yeah, it's always painful, but you have to do it. So every cut hurts, like every scene you remove, especially if you executed it in the way that you want it to,

it hurts. To make it better? But you also know it has to happen. Or to make it more digestible? Like, why do you say you have to do it? Well, I think in the end, like pacing is probably the most important thing, period. Your movie has to flow and breathe and like live. And you watch it and you know like okay like i'm attached to this scene i'm attached to like the dialogue i really like how we lit it the camera moves very beautifully here but the movie's like stopping for a second and then starting in the next scene and you have to listen to that and i'm still learning to listen to that i i feel that we finally arrived at a cut where I had finally listened to everything.

But it took a long time. It has to go bit by bit. You can't just scorch earth because it's so painful. You're at peace now, though? Yeah, I'm at peace. Yeah. What other kinds of movies are you going to make? Well, I'm in pre-production right now for, I guess it's a horror movie for another horror film. Although I think that's the last one I'll do. Why are you reluctant to even call it that? Like Hereditary, it starts as one thing and ends as another. And it's, in the most superficial sense, it's like Scandinavian folk horror, but it's really a character study.

Was this one of the scripts that you had written before that you're finally getting a chance to make? Yes, I had written it, but I had written it very recently. Can you describe just a little bit the feeling of being, I say this at the risk of seeming like a schmuck,

but like a hot young director. You know, there's very much like, I know that all the people that saw this movie that I've spoken to was like, wow, this guy's going to make amazing movies.

And that must be cool. I presume that you're getting a lot of that as you talk to people about the next projects you're going to do. What is it like to be in that moment?

I mean, it's really exciting. It's great. Right now, like, Hereditary has not come out yet. And the reception has been, like, really warm. And there's been, like, a lot of, like, hyperbole happening. And you fantasize about those superlatives, right? Like, when you're making the film, you fantasize about people talkinglatives, right? Like when you're making the film, you fantasize about people talking this way about your film.

But I'm also, maybe it's the realist in me or the pessimist, but I'm waiting for the backlash and for the pendulum to swing in the other direction because I don't think a film can really survive those kinds of expectations. I'm worried that people are going into hereditary expecting something that it isn't. And so in some ways I feel like pressure for the next one. That's maybe... You'll just have to keep topping yourself until you die.

It'll be fine. Yeah. My goal is really just to keep making the next one. Keep signing up for the next one before the new one comes out. You know, that's the strategy. Ari, I end every show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen. What is the last great thing that you've seen?

One movie I just want to mention, and it came out a couple years ago, but I'm kind of obsessed with it, and I think it's really, really special, and I think it's just a special and I think it's just a perfect film I'm tantalized right now is Andrew Hayes

45 years that's amazing he was here a few weeks ago oh he was here a few weeks ago for Lean on Pete for Lean on Pete wow wonderful dude

I really I've never met him but I I really think 45 years is like an all-timer. I've seen it so many times, and that's one movie that I screened for the crew on Hereditary.

I guess the last thing I saw that I was really excited by, I guess there were two. I thought Isle of Dogs was kind of incredible. Are you a West guy? Not all the time. Obviously, he's an incredible craftsman. But I like fall off the wagon and I get back on. But this one I thought was just like kind of staggering

as an aesthetic achievement. And then I really liked You Were Never Really Here by Lin Ramsey. Yeah. Can you talk about that just a little bit? It's like really absurd. Like it's a really ridiculous story. Like it's so pulpy and I love how pulpy it is. Like there's this like Pizzagate plot that's like happening and you don't even – like you might like blink and you miss it.

But like that's what's happening. Yeah. But it is like so – I had not heard it described as Pizzagate but that is exactly what it is. That's what's happening. Yeah. But it is so... I had not heard it described as Pizzagate, but that is exactly what it is. That's what's happening. It's so funny. But it's so tied. It's sympathetically tied to this unhinged person's perspective

in a way that I'm not sure if I've really seen it that way before. It really felt like it got at PTSD in a way that i had not seen before and she's just such a brilliant uh filmmaker when it comes to editing and joaquin phoenix is incredible and i and johnny greenwood score is amazing and yeah i i really really loved that film and i i think my expectations were dropped because there were a lot of people who i guess were disappointed by it. And I was looking for that. I was like looking for like what people had a problem with and I couldn't find it.

I really like that film. My producer is silently applauding right now because he really loves that movie too. Ari, I really loved your movie Hereditary. Thank you for doing this today. Thanks so much for having me.