'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.
The nice thing about a horror movie is that people go in looking to be unsettled.
The beauty of the horror genre is that you can smuggle in these harder stories, and the genre comes with certain demands, but mostly you need to find the catharsis in whatever story you're telling. What may be seen as a deterrent for audiences in one genre suddenly becomes a virtue in another genre.
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.
Sometimes you want pain to be acknowledged and not whitewashed - or erased by some exceptionalist point of view.
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.
A betrayal in a family is much more devastating than a betrayal among friends, or even lovers.
Filmmaking is so much about catharsis anyway. It's therapeutic.
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.
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.
I'm very impressed by films like' Whiplash' or what Fincher does, where you get all these different... Where you get all this coverage that's perfectly linked up. I actually find coverage very confusing. But I love sequencing shots because I know exactly where I am.
The joy of making a genre film is that you have audiences in that place, and it's a perfect place to start because all it takes is finding ways to startle them out of that complacency and encourage a different kind of engagement.
I love Cronenberg so much, especially the films he was doing in the mid to late '80s and early '90s, like 'Naked Lunch' and 'Dead Ringers'.
I found that the things I am afraid of most are things for which there are no obvious remedies. Like, what do you do with a fear of death? You either come to terms with it or you don't, but there's no solving it.
The next film I'm making is a horror film, and I'm making it with A24. It's a dark break-up movie that becomes a horror film, set in Sweden. That's all I can really say now. It's called 'Midsommar.' Everybody's been spelling it wrong. It's 'midsummer' in Swedish.
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.
I'm very fortunate in that my parents are artists. My mom is a brilliant poet... She still is a great visual artist. My dad is a jazz drummer... I've been very fortunate in that I've had parents who supported and encouraged me and haven't really questioned what I'm doing or asked me to question it.
I don't necessarily consider myself a horror filmmaker.
My first experience in a movie theater was Dick Tracy. There was a scene with a guy with a Tommy gun and a wall of fire behind him. I panicked, screamed, and jumped out of my seat. And I ran six New York city blocks, running into the street and almost got hit by a bunch of cars and had my mom chasing after a panic-stricken four-year-old.
The way I work is, I always compose a shot list before I talk to anybody, including my DP. So I'll spend a couple months basically creating the movie in my head, so I have a very solid film in my head, where I know every shot, and I know what the transitions between scenes are.
