Source: Entertainment Weekly
Heads will roll when Hereditary fans hear this.
Ari Aster, the writer-director behind the 2017 horror sensation that made him an auteur of international renown, “wrote a prequel to this,” he revealed at a American Cinematheque screening of the film in Los Angeles on Sunday per Gold Derby.
There’s just one problem: He isn’t sure if he’d like to make it.
“It never feels like the right time. It’s a prequel, not a sequel, so I don’t know where this goes,” Aster shared.
Hereditary landed like a bomb on the horror scene when it released in 2017. Starring Toni Collette as the anxious mother of two kids who finds herself flailing when struck by unimaginable tragedy, the sinister tale of cults and covenants launched Aster’s career into the stratosphere.
He followed Hereditary with another chiller, Midsommar, and then branched into queasy, surreal comedy with Beau Is Afraid and taut social satire with Eddington.
But a Hereditary prequel could make the perfect opening to return to horror, given the film’s loud and loyal fanbase.
Aster demonstrated he’s still current on the horror scene, shouting out the reigning kings of genre at the box office, 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who directed A24’s Backrooms, and 26-year-old Curry Barker, who directed Focus Features’ Obsession.
“This is a really interesting month with Curry and Kane… I hadn’t seen Kane’s shorts until Backrooms came out. He’s really interesting. He’s 20 years old and what he’s been doing on [3D software] Blender, I think he’s clearly following a vision. I’m thrilled to see that. That’s so exciting,” he said.
But that old term “elevated horror,” which Aster was saddled with alongside his contemporaries, like Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Robert Eggers (The Witch), does not spark joy.
“I hate the term ‘elevated horror,’ especially because it’s sort of a box that I was put in, and horror fans took umbrage,” Aster said, adding he was “just trying to make a really good horror movie,” and Eggers “was doing the same thing. The Witch came before me.”
Aster spoke about the film before an audience at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, as part of American Cinematheque’s mini Aster retrospective, nestled within the ongoing fifth edition of their annual Bleak Week Global Film Festival.
Comfortable in front of an enthusiastic audience, Aster left his fans with a juicy bit of behind-the-scenes gossip. Discussing Hereditary’s precarious financing journey, Aster noted he was “afraid to say the name” of the financier who eventually boarded the project, “because he might show up in my life.”
Aster revealed that the man was “Really a nightmare, who I had signed my life away [to]. I had signed the film away to him. He had me in the palm of his hand. It was one of the darkest times of my life actually finishing this film and trying to protect it, keep it from just blowing up.”
