So. I was recently reading up on Ari Aster’s new movie, Eddington, which just wrapped filming a couple of months ago (and is apparently a Western!). And while doing this reading up, I became aware that most of the short films Mr. Aster made before his feature writing/directing debut, Hereditary (2018), are online. Given that filmmakers are sometimes (understandably) not so keen on letting audiences see work made when they were still getting their sea legs, this seems like an incredible gift.
That is, in part, because it does allow us to see all the ways Aster’s art has and has not changed in the years since (for squares in the audience: his other features are 2019’s Midsommar and 2023’s Beau Is Afraid). All but one of these shorts back up my theory that all Aster movies are comedies, all but one of them are disturbing to the nth degree, and all but one of them confirm, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Aster has very, very, very, very, very, extremely, very, very serious issues with his parents (and maybe just the concept of the nuclear family in general).
TDF Really Works (2011), in which Aster also stars, is a faux infomercial for a fictional product called Tino’s Dick Fart. Aster would have been around 25 when he made this, which makes its extremely sophomoric nature a little less eye-rolling. Still, it’s by far the weakest of the shorts; it’s trying a little too hard to be edgy, and it’s not as funny as it thinks it is.
Beau (2011) is an early version of (duh) Beau Is Afraid (2023), and it is, quite frankly, masterful. So much so that it’s almost impossible to imagine Aster made it around the same time as TDF Really Works. The way he shoots everything (including his own cameo as an angry guy in a hallway), the use of sound, the pacing, and the fact that it has such a specific point of view and voice, which is likely the single hardest thing for a young artist to pull off… it’s like, yeah, no kidding Aster went on to be a big deal.
It also presents the titular protagonist’s mother as being literally inhuman.
A chunk of the short was recreated in the feature version (it’s honestly the best part of the feature version, an incredible, unbelievably funny anxiety attack in movie form). But there are some key differences. Most notably: Billy Mayo, who passed away in 2019, delivers a very different interpretation of the titular protagonist than the one eventually put forth by Joaquin Phoenix in the full-length.
The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011) was Aster’s thesis film at the prestigious American Film Institute, and it… is… unsettling: it’s about a father (Mayo again) who is being forced into an incestuous relationship by his abusive son. For my money, it’s the scariest movie Aster has ever made; it plays like Todd Solondz’s Happiness as directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
It would be easy to accuse Johnsons of edgelordism, given that it uses such a serious subject as fodder for a thriller. But I’d argue it has great depth. It’s incredibly effective at conveying the fear, shame, and guilt in which sexual assault often results, and its depiction of gaslighting feels extremely real. And the cast, which also includes Brandon Greenhouse and Angela Bullock, does amazing work.
But also, I ask again, WHAT THE FUCK WAS HAPPENING IN THE ASTER HOUSEHOLD???
Munchausen (2013) is the only one of these movies that suggests that, despite appearances, Aster loves his parents.
I’m kidding. It’s called Munchausen, for Christ’s sake.
Regardless of its subject matter, Munchausen is a far easier watch than Johnsons. It’s a silent film, at least half of which is successfully played for comedy (and fairly broad comedy at that), which makes the looming threat of filicide go down much easier. Once again, it’s worth noting how in control Aster is here - visually, tonally, and narratively - a good five years before he made Hereditary.
Munchausen also has a great cast, which includes Bonnie Bedelia, Rachel Brosnahan, Office Space’s Richard Riehle, and Liam Aiken (who you may remember as the kid who plays Tom Hanks’ murdered son in Road to Perdition).
Brosnahan returns in the hilarious, sad, and unexpectedly poignant Basically (2013), which is one long, fourth-wall-breaking monologue by a moderately-successful actress from an ultra-wealthy family. Aster’s direction remains impeccable (his fluidity with tone is especially impressive), and Brosnahan is next-level incredible, showing more range in fourteen minutes than some actors do in a lifetime.
And because I know you’re wondering, yes, Brosnahan’s character has a miserable relationship with her parents.
The Turtle’s Head (2014) reunites Aster with Riehle for a satirical private detective story in which the P.I. is a misogynist horndog faced with a very, uh, unusual mystery. It plays out like the silliest episode of The Twilight Zone ever made; it’s just as immature as TDF Really Works, but it’s a hundred times funnier.
Interestingly, this is the only one without a dysfunctional child/parent relationship. So.
Finally, we have C’est La Vie (2016), which is something of a spiritual sequel to Basically. This time, instead of a beautiful young woman delivering the fourth-wall-breaking monologue, it’s a mentally ill and often violent homeless man (Bradley Fisher). I suppose there’s an argument to be made that this short demonizes the mentally ill and the homeless, but it feels to me more like an argument in favor of having public mental health problems than it does an argument against human rights (and P.S., in a film made the year Trump took office, it’s hard to believe that red baseball cap isn’t intentionally meaningful). Fisher, who went on to have a small role in Beau Is Afraid, is terrific, and if you live in a city where homeless schizophrenics ranting at some invisible person is an all-too-common sight, C’est La Vie will hit especially close to home.
It also has a graphic story about the protagonist’s parents burning alive in their home when he was a child.
And thus, we conclude with this important takeaway:
Mr. and Mrs. Aster, if you need help, blink twice.