The horror movie Ari Aster called a masterpiece: “It makes me want to pull my arms off”
In the world of horror, there are a few names which hold more weight than others. John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper sit alongside David Cronenberg and Dario Argento. But in the more modern reality of scary movies, Ari Aster is slowly crafting his own niche of folk-driven masterclasses that deliver truly terrifying premises and do so with scything intellect and unnerving skill. It has cast Aster as one filmmaker who is sure to join those greats in the pantheon of the genre.
Considering his debut feature-length movie, Hereditary, starring the wonder Toni Colette, only arrived in 2018, Aster’s rise to the top has been a quick one. This isn’t because of his prolificacy but his willingness to champion quality over quantity. His more recent works, Midsommar, starring Florence Pugh and Beau Is Afraid, featuring Joaquin Phoenix, were both as equally menacing and measured, though perhaps the former is considered more technically aligned with the horror genre.
While probably more keenly linked to the idea of creeping menace than abject terror, Aster’s movies all share a unique vision. They deliver glorious vignettes, often using vivid colour and textured filters, to create a sense of arthouse-driven splendour. However, these impressive pieces of cinematography belie the haunting dread that lurks behind the imagery. It’s a technique that is also represented in his favourite horror movies, five of which he spoke about with A.Frame.
Noting some of his favourite Japanese horror movies, including Kwaidan, Onibaba, Ugetsu, The Face of Another and Cure, he also spoke highly of 1981’s Possession, the game-changing Don’t Look Now from Nicolas Roeg and a number more. But there is one movie which he saved special praise for the brilliant, game-changing 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter, a movie so provocative it left its director blacklisted for the majority of his career.
Directed by Charles Laughton, the movie was considered so culturally vulgar at the time that it saw the director’s career stopped in its tracks: “What else might Charles Laughton have made? As with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, the custodians of culture deemed it pornographic and prevented Laughton from ever making another film, but its legacy is unmatched.”
The ban is likely to do with the movie’s sordid premise, which sees a sinister preacher, Robert Mitchum’s Reverend Harry Powell, marry and then terrorise unsuspecting widows in a bid to tear their money from them. It seamlessly blends elements of noir and psychological thriller within an encompassing sense of inescapable dread.
For Aster, the movie can be seen as the seed of countless director’s cinematic visions: Prefiguring so many coups to come – from Lynch’s work to the Coens’ to Kubrick’s to Greenaway’s – Laughton’s expressionist masterpiece is so great that it makes me want to pull my arms off.”
While maiming oneself is rarely the answer, Aster’s devotion to the brooding movie is worthy of some kind of tribute. There are easy lines of inspiration to be drawn from it to the aforementioned directors, many of whom would not have had the same careers if not for works like this.
