The horror movie Ari Aster calls a “warm, uncanny hug of doom”
While it might not be accurate to call Ari Aster the modern master of horror, it feels right to say that he’s at least the modern master of anxiety. The film director has only three films to his name – Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid – but all three tilt the scales toward the unnerving in their own unique ways. Only Hereditary is a horror film in the conventional sense, with Midsommar being a strange, pastoral psychological thriller and Beau is Afraid taking shape as a demented hero’s journey.
When asked by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences’ digital magazine A.frame to name his five favourite horror films, Aster found it to be a difficult task. “There are so many films that I desperately wanted to include — Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, Psycho, The Shining, The Innocents, Last Year at Marienbad, pretty much every film by Lynch and Cronenberg — but I was asked to choose five and these reflect my present mood,” he claimed.
After saying his peace about Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, Aster turned his attention to the 1970s thriller classic Don’t Look Now. More of a slow-burning psychological piece that turns horrific in its final minutes, Don’t Look Now still pushed all the right buttons for Aster.
“Arguably Nicolas Roeg’s greatest film (there’s a case to be made for Walkabout), this is a dead-serious reckoning with grief, a meditation on time and memory (or is it prophecy?) and a warm, uncanny hug of doom,” Aster wrote. “Taking its editing cues from Resnais and doing so much with Venice that it would be futile to try topping it, this is a film that gives and gives upon repeat viewings—and socks you in the gut every time.”
For his fifth and final film, Aster decided to go with a classic: Brian De Palma’s 1976 Stephen King adaptation Carrie. Renowned for its supernatural elements and gory final moments, Carrie was one of the earliest horror hits in the United States, along with The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. For Aster, it was the first film that truly left scars on his brain.
“The film that traumatized me the most as a kid. It took me 15 years to come back to it, and when I finally summoned the courage, I was shocked to realize how campy it was (I shouldn’t have been surprised, given what I knew/loved about De Palma),” Aster wrote about Carrie. “As with any great horror movie, its cruelty feels unfathomable and its images are potentially life-ruining (Piper Laurie with the knife???), but it’s also distinguished by a profound sense of empathy and sadness. Poor Carrie.”
Check out the trailer for Don’t Look Now down below.
