Ari Aster Said His Dad Told Him Not to Write Another Movie After ‘Beau Is Afraid’, But I Think The Real Issue Is He Needs to Return to Horror
He says his father “might’ve been right.”
Ari Aster wrote and directed two incredible first feature films: Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019). For his third film, Beau is Afraid (2023), Aster strayed from the horror genre and created a surrealist tragicomedy about an anxious man’s relationship with his mother. Unlike Hereditary and Midsommar, Beau is Afraid was not successful. It was a box office bomb and received mixed reviews from critics.
The director recently revealed on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that Beau is Afraid caused his father to advise him not to write his next movie.
Aster did not follow his father’s advice. The interview was part of the marketing campaign for Aster’s fourth feature film, Eddington, which he again wrote and directed. So far it has made $9.1 million against a budget of $25 million. As Aster said in the interview, his father “might’ve been right.”
If I can insert my lowly opinion into this conversation, I think Aster is a wonderful writer. I recently read the Midsommar screenplay and was impressed by the additional notes he included and how well constructed the story and characters were. As a horror fan, my request would be that Aster return to the genre!
Maron and Aster did discuss how Aster hasn’t seen the same level of success since leaving the horror genre and Aster said he is “generally not a horror guy”. Even so, he used the genre perfectly with his first two films. Lots of artists end up with their “best” (most well known, most financially successful) work being completely different from what they feel their actual artistic calling is. For instance, after finding mainstream success as a singer songwriter, Joni Mitchell stepped back from the music industry as she saw herself as primarily a visual artist. She’s said that she considers herself to be a “painter derailed by circumstance”.
I say that I’m not a horror guy but that’s not necessarily true. I love horror films. I just… there are certain people who almost exclusively watch horror movies, that’s all they’re interested in, and that’s not me. I love a good horror movie. When those films are working, they’re thrilling and they can feel dangerous in a really exciting way. I just find because it’s a genre that traditionally does well, or it can, I find that it attracts a lot of cynical people and a lot of those films just feel cynical to me. And I get bored easily.
Ari Aster, WTF with Marc Maron
For most artists, the question is financial: what work can they do that will get the rent paid and keep the lights on? Throughout history, most artists have never even been known as artists and work a day job that has nothing to do with their art. In an essay about writers and money, author Majula Martin wrote: “It’s also presumed Emily Dickinson’s maid didn’t go home and write poems after work. I bet she did.”
For someone like Aster, who has achieved a basic level of financial security through the success of his first two films, money is still very important. If he doesn’t make movies that are financially successful, he won’t get deals with movie studios, which means he won’t have the funding to hire the talent he needs to realize his vision. Or buy equipment. Or secure locations. Or find distribution. In capitalism, money makes the world go round and it’s nearly impossible to be an artist and not defer to an artistic path that has a chance of being financially successful.
And Aster’s horror movies have been very successful. Hereditary made $87.8 million against its $10 million budget and Midsommar made $48.5 million on a $9 million budget. If he’s not inspired by the horror genre anymore, he probably won’t repeat this success. However, if he’s just wanting to prove himself as a filmmaker outside of the genre, why not make more horror movies while also working towards some other artistic goal? He’d be in good company. Iconic horror filmmaker Wes Craven also spent his career feeling like he should be doing “more” than horror, but he was so skilled at creating genre films (and he did enjoy them, even if he also felt like he wanted to branch out) that they account for almost his entire filmography.
Maybe Ari Aster is a great horror filmmaker who views himself as primarily a non-horror storyteller. That’s okay. I would still like some more Ari Aster horror movies please. I hope he is open to returning to his best (so far, in my opinion) form as he begins to think about his fifth film.
Further reading:
- ‘Beau is Afraid’ Explained: Thank You, I’m Sorry
- Wes Craven Movies, Ranked/Analyzed
- 80+ Horror Movies About Making Movies
