Ari Aster is a director who has become tremendously relevant by focusing on what has been termed “elevated horror.” Horror cinema that is more focused on deep themes and low doses of gore or violence, dispensing with its more genre-specific elements.
His first two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, were two enormous critical and commercial successes that transcended cult works to become mainstream hits. And now he would like to return to make a prequel to the first of them.
A director attached to “elevated terror”
After a screening of Hereditary at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, during the Q&A session, the American director stated that “I wrote a prequel to this. It never seems to be the right time (to shoot it). It’s a prequel, not a sequel, so I don’t know how it continues,” confirming that his idea was to turn it into a trilogy. Something that seems to have never come to fruition.
Aster has also taken the opportunity to state that “I hate the term ‘elevated horror’, especially because it’s a kind of box they put me in and with which horror fans were offended,” which, in fairness, is not true. The director himself declared at the film’s premiere to the media Cult MTL that “I want (Hereditary) to fall into that strange subgenre of ‘elevated horror’. And for that reason, when I was presenting the film around, I described it as a family tragedy that turns into a nightmare.”
Moreover, he has good reasons to want to return to Hereditary and win over the horror fans he alienated. His last two films have been two enormous failures with critics and audiences, resulting in two horrible box office flops. This puts Ari Aster’s future in the air, making it hard to imagine what it will be or how, but it seems we are now closer than ever to Aster’s return to “elevated horror”. Although he denies ever wanting to do something with that name.
