Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar are great films, but they are also—in their own unique and delightful ways—exhausting. By the time Alex Wolff heads up to the tree house and Florence Pugh is crowned the May Queen, it’s not so much that you’re glad the movies are over as much as you’re glad to finally have a respite from… their whole thing. So it is with a bit of hesitancy that we report that Aster has teased that his next movie is going to be four hours long. Four hours of oppressive horror that works its way under your skin until you have no choice but to scream “I AM YOUR MOTHER” at the top of your lungs. That’s so many hours.
Granted, it’s not quite clear if Aster is being serious. This news comes from The Playlist which got it from an interview Aster did with UC Santa Barbara’s Associated Students Program Board, and he could’ve been exaggerating a little bit. Then again, the director’s cut of Midsommar is 171-minutes long, which is nearly three hours, so it’s not like jumped to four would be absurd. Also, his next movie supposedly won’t even necessarily be horror, with Aster teasing last year that he wanted to do a “zonky nightmare comedy” next. Doesn’t that sound fun? Much more fun than going to Europe with your crap-ass boyfriend, learning about an exciting new culture, stuffing him inside a bear suit, and then burning him to death.
Actually, Midsommar kind of was a nightmare comedy already… well, there was at least a lot of laughing at the end. It didn’t seem super funny to the boyfriend.