The film industry is always looking for the next visionary director who can push the boundaries of storytelling and evoke visceral reactions from audiences. In recent years, Ari Aster has emerged as a director demonstrating a rare gift for crafting unsettling psychological thrillers that linger in the mind long after the closing credits. His debut feature film Hereditary introduced Aster’s signature style of slow-burning tension, family dysfunction, and supernatural dread. His follow-up Midsommar further cemented his status as an innovative director with a keen understanding of human frailty and man’s capacity for darkness. While his films are not for the faint of heart, for those seeking an unflinching exploration of grief, relationships, and the human psyche, the disturbing genius of Ari Aster awaits.
Ari Aster: The Mind Behind Hereditary and Midsommar
Ari Aster is an American film director known for crafting psychological horror films that explore humanity’s deepest fears and darkest impulses. His first two feature films, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), announced Aster as a disturbing yet insightful new voice in horror cinema.
Aster’s films center around relatable characters who descend into madness and violence. In Hereditary, a family unravels following the death of their reclusive grandmother and the sinister machinations of a cult. Midsommar follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that descends into a bizarre and brutal nightmare.
Aster’s films are deliberate, dread-inducing slow burns. He favors unsettling emotional realism and atmospheric, immersive filmmaking over cheap scares. Aster elicits career-best performances from his actors, including Toni Collette in Hereditary and Florence Pugh in Midsommar. Collette’s anguished, unhinged performance as an artist coping with loss earned her considerable acclaim.
Some critics argue Aster’s films are overly bleak or exploitative. However, his films thoughtfully explore how human vulnerabilities and the need for purpose and belonging can be manipulated for sinister ends. Aster has cited Ingmar Bergman and Roman Polanski as influences, and like them, he uses the genre to insightfully examine human relationships and psychology.
Ari Aster is one of the most promising voices in contemporary filmmaking. With only two feature films under his belt, he has established himself as a uniquely gifted director able to craft emotionally devastating, psychologically rich horror films of rare depth and audacity. His future films will no doubt continue to subvert expectations and push the boundaries of the genre.
Family Trauma and Grief in Hereditary
Ari Aster’s directorial debut, Hereditary, explores the trauma of grief and familial dysfunction. The film follows the Graham family after the matriarch, Ellen, passes away. Her daughter, Annie, husband, Steve, son, Peter, and daughter, Charlie, are left to pick up the pieces.
Annie, an artist, struggles to cope with the loss of her mother with whom she had a complicated relationship. She joins a grief support group to work through her anguish and resentment towards her late mother. Meanwhile, Peter, a teenager, grapples with feelings of guilt over Ellen’s death and his role in a tragic accident that befalls his sister.
The family begins to unravel as strange phenomena plague their home. Aster employs surreal and unsettling imagery, including decapitated animals and paranormal events, to represent the family’s descent into madness and sorrow.
Relationships fracture as the Grahams become increasingly isolated in their grief. Annie’s mental state deteriorates due to the traumatic loss of both her mother and daughter as well as the lack of support from her husband. Peter turns to drugs to escape from his guilt and the strange happenings in his home.
Aster crafts a harrowing portrait of loss and the destructive power of unresolved anguish and resentment. The film suggests that grief, and the inability to heal from trauma, can tear families apart and have ruinous consequences. Overall, through masterful direction and slow-building suspense, Hereditary explores grief in a poignant and deeply unsettling way.
Cult Horrors: Midsommar’s Folk Traditions Gone Wrong
Ari Aster’s films are unsettling psychological thrillers that incorporate elements of folklore and cult practices. His sophomore film Midsommar is set in a remote Swedish commune and examines a pagan cult with sinister undercurrents.
Disturbing Traditions
Midsommar follows a group of American tourists who travel to Sweden to experience a summer solstice festival in a rural village. The festivities become increasingly bizarre and unsettling. The villagers practice ancient rituals, like dancing around a maypole, that have pagan origins but have been twisted into something sinister.
Participants in the rituals are subjected to trauma and manipulation. The commune’s elders prey on vulnerable outsiders to join their insular community. They use deception and hallucinogens to indoctrinate new members into their belief system.
Aster subverts idyllic depictions of community and tradition. The midsummer festival setting, with its lush greenery and flower crowns, masks the darkness beneath. The commune seems utopian but operates through coercion and control.
Folklore Gone Wrong
Midsommar incorporates elements of Scandinavian folklore, but contorts them into something nightmarish. Many rituals revolve around fertility and the harvest, but take a violent turn. Aster picked obscure pieces of folklore that most audiences would be unfamiliar with, allowing him to twist their meaning.
The film suggests that ancient traditions can be co-opted for sinister purposes. Without context, cultural practices can seem bizarre or nonsensical to outsiders. The commune preys on the ignorance of visitors, who don’t fully understand the implications of the rituals until it’s too late.
Midsommar leaves the viewer unsettled by warping the familiar into something strange and threatening. The film implies that any close-knit community has the potential for darkness if it demands unquestioning allegiance. Aster subverts the audience’s expectations by infusing horror into pastoral scenes of natural beauty and cultural tradition.
Aster’s Signature Style: Slow-Burning Psychological Terror
Ari Aster’s films are known for their slow-burning psychological terror and unsettling atmosphere. His signature directorial style utilizes prolonged tension and dread to deeply disturb audiences.
Deliberate Pacing
Aster employs a deliberately slow pace in his films to ratchet up feelings of unease and foreboding. Scenes unfold at an unhurried speed, allowing the viewer’s anticipation and anxiety to build. The gradual progression of sinister events feels inescapable, like a “slow descent into madness” according to critic A.A. Dowd.
Ambiguous Menace
The threats in Aster’s films are often ambiguous or unseen, lurking just out of view. He leaves much to the audience’s imagination, opting for subtle hints over outright revelations. The unknown nature of the menace is more psychologically tormenting than any visual effects or jump scares. Viewers are left questioning what is real and what is illusion.
Flawed and Sympathetic Protagonists
Aster’s films frequently follow complex, relatable protagonists with human flaws and foibles. Their struggles with grief, trauma, mental health issues or strained relationships evoke sympathy from the audience. The familiar and believable characters make their unraveling mental states and encounters with the sinister that much more harrowing. We see ourselves in them and feel their anguish deeply.
Ari Aster has crafted a unique and impactful style of psychological horror that lingers in the mind long after the credits roll. Through a measured pace, ambiguous threats, and sympathetic characters, he creates an atmosphere of dread and a journey into madness that is hard to forget. His haunting films announce the arrival of an important new voice in horror cinema.
Through his first two feature films, Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster has established himself as a director with a keen eye for human drama and a gift for crafting unsettling psychological horror. His films explore complex themes of grief, family dysfunction, and relationships in a slow, deliberate manner that builds to a fever pitch of emotional catharsis and disturbing revelations. Aster has a talent for creating fully realized characters and worlds that feel authentic yet sinister, familiar yet strange. His films linger in the mind long after viewing not just due to frightening images or jump scares but through the emotional experience of the journey. At just 32 years old, Aster has already demonstrated a level of directorial skill and vision that signals the emergence of an important new voice in horror cinema. His future films will undoubtedly continue to push the genre in new directions and further cement his status as a master of unsettling human drama. The genre has found a worthy successor in the disturbing genius of Ari Aster.
