Ari Aster's First Hit Horror Movie Wasn't Hereditary Or Midsommar

Warning: This article will discuss a film about sexual abuse and incest.

Filmmaker Ari Aster exploded into the world of cinema with the release of "Hereditary" in 2018. That film was structured around a demonic cult and the magical glyphs they used to conduct ritual sacrifices, but moreso, it was about intergenerational guilt, barely suppressed rage, and the dissolution of the family unit. Toni Collette gives a career-best performance as a woman who kind of hated her own mother, and who has no small amount of depressed resentment toward her own family.

Aster followed that with "Midsommar," another film about cult sacrifices, this time complimented by the murder/suicide of the protagonist's family. Like "Hereditary," "Midsommar" was deeply beloved by the horror community, and is often held up as an example of the A24 house style. Florence Pugh also gives an astonishing performance as a grieving young woman whose awful boyfriend hates her. In 2023, Aster made the dour, panicked, and deliberately difficult "Beau is Afraid," a Freudian freakout of the highest order, set either in a dystopian future, or inside the mind of a man who suffers from panic attacks. It was one of the best films of the year. Aster's next film, "Eddington," is due in theaters on July 18, 2025. 

While Aster was still a student at the American Film Institute, however, he was already trying to be as provocative as possible. Aster has always been interested in delving into the darkest corners of guilt and taboo, and his thesis short, "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons," was no exception. The short screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2011, and no one knew what to make of its depictions of domestic abuse and multiple scenes of father-son incest.

The story of "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons" is deliberately off-putting. Billy Mayo plays Sidney Johnson, a respected poet who was happily married to his wife, Joan (Angela Bullock). Early in the film, Sidney walks in on their son, Isaiah (Carlton Jeffrey as a boy, Brandon Greenhouse as an adult) pleasuring himself. Sidney tactfully steps out ... not realizing that Isaiah was looking at a picture of Sidney. This eventually turns into an abusive relationship wherein Isaiah begins systematically sexually abusing his father. 

Years later, when Isaiah is about to be married, Sidney writes a confession about his son's incestuous abuse. The confession inspires Isaiah to continue the acts of sexual assault on his father. Joan deliberately blocks out the sounds of screams she hears through the walls. Eventually, Sidney will be killed and Joan will confront Isaiah about his acts of sexual abuse. Their argument will lead to bloody violence. 

Aster talked about his inspiration for his dark, twisted short film in an interview back in 2011, and he said his goal for "Johnsons" was to crack open taboos that hadn't even been contemplated before. In his words:

"We were talking about topics that are too taboo to be explored, and so we arrived at taboos that weren't even taboos because they were so unfathomable, and the most popular was that of a son molesting his father. 'That should never be made into a film!' So, it began on that level, but from there it evolved into something very different."

He insisted in that same interview that the film wasn't meant to be a comment on race, and that the Johnsons are Black merely because he wanted to cast his good friend, Greenhouse, in the lead role. (Aster is white.)

Aster said he knew that his film would invite controversy, although he admitted that it took him so long to make, he had eventually lost sight of the shocking nature of the subject matter. He also aspired to make "Johnsons" as a drama, not as an exploitation film, telling an emotionally honest tale of pain and abuse, but also present it as a satire, with a horrible, bloody ending. Aster said that "Johnsons" was meant to be seen as a send-up of a 1950s family melodrama like the ones Douglas Sirk or Nicholas Ray used to make.

Aster revealed, however, that while the film was making the rounds through various film festivals, it was illegally leaked online. Online critics were, perhaps predictably, shocked at the subject matter, and one can easily find the short itself, and any number of video reviews, on YouTube. The leak seemingly boosted the film's profile, even if Aster didn't get any money for the bootlegs. The pundits were quick to lay all manner of descriptors on the film, calling it disturbing, disgusting, intense, etc. 

Eventually, the film was reviewed by Malcolm Harris for the Huffington Post, and he found that the online pundits didn't quite understand the purpose of the movie. Harris revealed that he, too, was a survivor of sexual abuse in his African American family, and he recognized, in "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons," the bleak secrets that were kept in his community. He expected that all sexual abuse survivors would definitely see their experience reflected accurately in Aster's film, and that it's most certainly not the exploitation movie that online pundits seemed to think. It's a horror movie, perhaps, but it's not here for the fright or the thrills. It's here for the real-world horror.