A biography for Ari Asterhasn’t been written yet.
“I graduated from the American Film Institute in 2010, where I studied as a director, and came out with a few features I really wanted to make.”
“When I was 13 years old, I was obsessed with horror films. I even had, like, a binder that I filled with badly copied images from the Internet of, like, 'Pinhead and Basket Case.'”
“These are films that I really love, but I would say I'm not somebody who runs out to every horror film. I avoid most of them. I feel like a lot of them are made very cynically.”
“The nice thing about a horror movie is that people go in looking to be unsettled.”
“I love Lars von Trier. 'Dogville' is my favourite movie of the last 20 years. 'Nymphomaniac' and 'Melancholia' aren't quite as exciting as 'The Kingdom', 'Breaking the Waves', or 'The Idiots', but I'll always love him for being him.”
“With 'Hereditary', I wanted to make a film about what bothers me about life.”
“I know that I put a lot into 'Hereditary', and I'm proud of what it is. Beyond the fact that the film takes its time and asks for a certain amount of patience from the audience - and I hope it rewards that patience by the end - I know that I'm something of an aesthete. I care about aesthetics, and I love filmmaking.”
“I really feel like the horror genre is capable of so much. Especially as an in-theater experience, something you watch with other people. It can do so much.”
“In some ways, the audience becomes complacent when they go to a horror film. And so it's fun to take that attitude and then to upend it.”
“I love the horror genre. I consider myself a genre filmmaker. I love genre, but I think there's a certain amount of complacency that comes with watching a genre film; people know what the devices are. They know what the tropes are. They know the conventions.”
“A great horror film works as a communal experience more than almost anything else, except for maybe a comedy. That's something that I've experienced, just taking this movie around and watching it with audiences.”
“Most horror films are made very cynically, and they're usually made by studios for an audience that they know is there, no matter what they put out. And there are always exceptions - every year, it seems we have a great one coming out.”
“I know a lot of people who hate the ending of 'Rosemary's Baby' and wish that it was left ambiguous.”
“'Hereditary' is unabashedly a horror film. In a lot of ways, it's in dialogue with other horror films. But I do know that it was important for me that the film functioned first as a family drama. I know that I'm never affected by anything if I'm not invested in the people to whom the genre things are happening.”
“I got my MFA from AFI as a director in 2010. I've had time to make the shorts that I made previous to 'Hereditary' and to kind of build these movies in my head.”
“For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.”
“I enjoy turning things on the audience. I really like working in genre because people come into the films with certain expectations. They know the tropes so well that, when you turn on those, it can be shocking because there's a complacency that comes with watching those films.”
“A betrayal in a family is much more devastating than a betrayal among friends, or even lovers.”
“I can say that I put a lot of personal feelings into 'Hereditary', though I can also say that none of the characters in the film are surrogates for anybody in my family or for myself.”
“The idea of witches has always scared me because of the idea that there are Machiavellian forces out there that conspire to hurt others. There are people who do not have your best interest at heart and are actively willing to do harm to you and actively sending energy in that direction.”