LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The first thing writer-director Ari Aster felt after \u00ab\u00a0Hereditary’s\u00a0\u00bb midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival was relief that\u2026<\/b>
\nLOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The first thing writer-director Ari Aster felt after \u00ab\u00a0Hereditary’s\u00a0\u00bb midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival was relief that people didn’t hate it. Then headlines started popping up in the early hours of the morning declaring that the film had restored faith in the genre, that it was the most traumatically terrifying horror movie in ages, and that star Toni Collette should even get an Oscar nomination. The relief quickly turned to gratitude.
While film festival exaggeration is often real, \u00ab\u00a0Hereditary\u00a0\u00bb (out nationwide Friday) is living up to the hype. It has a 98 percent \u00ab\u00a0fresh\u00a0\u00bb rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is primed to become a breakout summer hit for the first-time feature filmmaker.
Told with an assured precision, this story about the death of a matriarch and how her remaining family is affected is that unique brand of scary movie that doesn’t quite end when you leave the theater, or sit down for dinner, or try to go to sleep. It’s the kind of movie that makes you wonder if you’ll ever be able to sleep again.
Perhaps it’s because Aster doesn’t think of his first feature as a horror film at all. He likes to describe it as a \u00ab\u00a0family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare,\u00a0\u00bb a statement that is somehow more bone-chilling than \u00ab\u00a0horror.\u00a0\u00bb
The soft-spoken 31-year-old had been struggling to get one of his scripts produced since he graduated from the American Film Institute in 2010. He made a few shorts that got some attention, but he was quickly burning through savings and starting to get bitter about his chosen industry. \u00ab\u00a0Hereditary\u00a0\u00bb was born out of this cynicism.
\u00ab\u00a0I endeavored to write a horror film because I figured it would be easier to get made,\u00a0\u00bb Aster said with a laugh.
It wasn’t a bad strategy. Horror films are one of the few solid financial bets in the unstable business of making movies no matter what the quality, but even more so when they’re good (think: \u00ab\u00a0Get Out,\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bbIt,\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bbA Quiet Place\u00a0\u00bb).
\u00ab\u00a0I love the genre, I love what it can do but I feel like so many are produced so cynically and most of what comes out is not very good,\u00a0\u00bb Aster said. \u00ab\u00a0I thought, ‘What do I want from a horror film and how do I make something more substantial?'\u00a0\u00bb
For Aster, that meant making sure people care about the characters: Annie Graham (Collette), an artist whose mother dies at the outset, her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their son Peter (Alex Wolff) and daughter Charlie (film newcomer Milly Shapiro, who won a special Tony honor at age 10 for her role in Broadway’s \u00ab\u00a0Matilda\u00a0\u00bb).
\u00ab\u00a0I wanted it to become a nightmare in the way that life can feel like a nightmare when disaster strikes \u2014 especially in succession,\u00a0\u00bb Aster said. \u00ab\u00a0All the horror elements are established in the first hour. Instead of these people serving as devices for the horror, the horror is always growing out of them and their experience and what they’re suffering through.\u00a0\u00bb
The script came to Collette after she’d just told her agent that she didn’t want to do anything heavy for a bit.
\u00ab\u00a0The murky, heavy stuff started to accumulate and I just wanted to make comedies and then he sent this and I was like, ‘aww (expletive),'\u00a0\u00bb Collette said. \u00ab\u00a0(Ari’s) a brilliant writer and it was just undeniable… I just had to.\u00a0\u00bb
A24, the studio behind \u00ab\u00a0Hereditary,\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bbMoonlight\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0Lady Bird,\u00a0\u00bb has already agreed to make Aster’s next film too, which he’ll start shooting later this summer \u2014 another genre film about death and strange happenings, this time in a remote Swedish town with \u00ab\u00a0unique midsummer traditions.\u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0Filmmaking has become so safe and it’s so contrary to what people really thrive on and yearn for, because ultimately they want an original voice, they want a strong, clear voice,\u00a0\u00bb Collette said. \u00ab\u00a0I’m really excited to see Ari’s work in the future. He’s the real deal with a clear, strong, exciting vision. He’s so talented.\u00a0\u00bb
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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com\/ldbahr<\/p>\n

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