[Interview] ‘Hereditary’ Director Ari Aster and Actor Alex Wolff on Living Up to Audience Expectations
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Ari Aster‘s Hereditary is the horror film that everyone is talking about this year. Ever since the film premiered at Sundance back in January, reviews have been positively glowing. As of this writing, Hereditary is sitting at a mighty comfortable 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (with a 9.1/10 average rating) and an 89/100 score on Metacritic. I was nervous going into the film, but if my review out of SXSW didn’t give you any indication, I’m completely won over. I just saw the film for a second time last week and I’m happy to report that it is even better on a second viewing. I was fortunate enough to speak with Aster and actor Alex Wolff about the film’s origins and their feelings about the response the film will receive from mainstream audiences.
One of the most shocking things about Hereditary is the fact that it is directed by a first-time feature filmmaker. Though Aster got his start directing short films, Hereditary is his feature-length directorial debut, and it’s one of the most confident, assured debuts to come along in years. So how did Aster come up with the idea for Hereditary? Rather than come up with a plot, he actually came up with certain scenes and moments from the film first.
“There were a few images that I guess sparked it for me,” Aster told us. “One being an event that takes place 30 minutes into the film and from there, you know, you build a movie around those set pieces.”
I have no doubt that viewers will know the specific scene he is referring to when they see it (it’s quite shocking), but what may surprise viewers more than some of the more grotesque happenings in Hereditary is that the first half of the film is very much a drama. It’s not until the halfway point of the film that familiar horror tropes begin to emerge. Don’t get me wrong, Hereditary is a horror film through and through, but it takes a bit of time to get to the goods. Aster screened a few different films for the cast and crew to prepare them for the shoot, and the films he selected will probably give you an idea of the type of film you are in for.
“It was important to me that I catered to the family drama before I even concerned myself with the horror,” Aster said. “So on a lot of the films that we were watching, especially showing the crew, before production, were in the family drama space. So we watched a few films by Mike Leigh. We watched All or Nothing and I think Secrets and Lies. And I know that I had the crew watch 45 Years, which is a recent film by Andrew Haigh, which is incredible….kind of a bleak relationship drama but it’s really also just like a very nontraditional ghost story. And then we watched In the Bedroom, The Ice Storm.”
It’s no secret that expectations are sky-high for Hereditary, but will the film be able to connect with mainstream audiences like it has with critics? Or are their expectations too high? Over the past few years, critical darlings like It Follows, The Babadook and The Witch have been released to rather tepid reactions from audiences. Will Hereditary fall prey to the same phenomenon? Wolff quickly jumped to the film’s defense when I brought up this subject.
“I think that audiences are much smarter than the studios give them credit for,” he said. “Every single moment in Hereditary is linked to a moment in the end for the payoff. I think it has the ability of captivating people the same way that Manchester By the Sea did. It has that audience because it’s so wrapped in human drama. And I think it’s way more terrifying than any of the horror movies that I’ve seen. I really have zero concern. I think people are going to be upset by it and disturbed by it. I think there was a phase when people were excited for these jump scares, like when Saw first came out. But I think that right now, this is the kind of movie that I think people will be really excited about it.”
Aster agreed and admitted that less patient viewers will likely find his film to be somewhat frustrating:
“The film does demand patience. It does take its time. And I hope that it rewards patience, or at least I hope that it rewards the patience of the audience. But yeah, the film is very specific. It’s a very bleak film. It’s rooted in very, very, ugly emotions. And it’s designed to bother you. I think it’s inevitable that there are going to be people who hate the film and that’s great.”
Audiences will be able to make up their own minds about Hereditary when A24 releases it in theaters nationwide on June 8, 2018.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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