Poll Link: https://strawpoll.com/polls/XOgOJq1PQn3
Hereditary and Midsommar are great but The Witch and The Lighthouse are some of the best movies ever made... Then again Aster did make that short film about the guy raping his dad so it's hard to say.
I didn’t like Hereditary, despite being well-made it’s just too unpleasant.
It is a horror where the grief is what's unbearable to watch.
I also liked Midsommar although I didn't particularly find it scary. I think the brightness of it all was an interesting attempt at switching it up, but we could have done with a few more nighttime or scary scenes.
I feel like Aster's movies are better, but Eggers' are more accessible and easier to watch.
I personally think Aster is scarier, but Eggers is a much better director.
Eggers easily, but that new flick of his looks like absolute dogshit so maybe if Aster's next flick with Joaquin Phoenix is decent my answer could change
The Witch and The Lighthouse come across as excellent horror with deep themes. The Lighthouse especially drawing on loneliness and sexuality makes it interesting to think about.
Midsommar I hated and I turned off Hereditary in the first 10 minutes and I don't recall why. Midsommar is literally just another "other cultures are scary" movie and I don't like that it uses an actual cultural event to essentially mock.
Midsommar spends too long before anything weird happens, and when it does it's a bunch of people standing around, putting their hands over their mouths and going "omg what is happening right now is so scaaaaary".
Usually they say horror is based on something humans do fear in real life and with Midsommar I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Am I supposed to be mad at her boyfriend from being raped? I she supposed to be?
Both The Witch and Midsommar end with the female lead coming to accept the new life but it just doesn't leave me with a satisfying answer why in Midsommar.
I mean it's pretty obvious in Midsommar with the whole sister killing herself and her parents and the indifference/abuse her friends were putting her through after it especially her bf.... That's like the exact type of backstory one can have to be vulnerable to violent cults...
Okay so it's about trauma. Fair enough.
I think I just soured on the movie because it took so long to do anything scary and when it did I wasn't really shocked at all. So maybe full attention wasn't paid.
It's been a year since I've seen both of them as well.
Basically yeah trauma/rebirth through violence that kinda shit. And I totally agree on that even as someone who really liked the movie . Not enough kills and when it did happen it was very quick. I expected more after that brutal opening ya know. Thats the main reason I've been digging 80's horror lol they just go buck wild quite often.
Midsommar is about fascism. The horror is that when rebuilding ourselves from traumatic loss/ grief, one way people heal is to become part of a fascist group. The “other culture” is a mishmash of various European and Scandinavian cultures probably because they most easily symbolize a collective idea of people who could potentially be fascists without outright being nazis in uniform.
