Hereditary bothered me; should I watch Midsommar?

With 500 mentions of any movie you get a free submarine sandwich. Why do you think I keep bringing up The Passion of Joan of Arc?


*stamps punch card*

The Passion of Rockatansky's Hatred of Joan or Arc

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Well, I was thinking about doing so, but since you went ahead and ruined the surprise...



*grumpily crosses arms*

It will make as much sense as disparaging Fincher. I recommend you watch Gone Girl paired with a Lifetime movie, perhaps the recent hit How I Met Your Murderer (of which I'm tangentially connected to the production. Bonus points for anyone that can deduce how!)

Then you can atone and continue yoinking.

See SE! He likes it! He really likes it!

*tearfully stamps punch card in close-up*

Are you the murderer?

You'll have to watch it and find out.

With the exclusion of Gone Girl, I've at least mostly liked what I've seen of Fincher (which is most of it). But he's not a guy who gets me terribly excited about what he's doing. Seven and Zodiac are kind of the anomalies in his filmography, in that I actually have passionate feelings about them. The rest I just think are decent to good movies. So, overall, a pretty good track record. But whatever.

*looks up movie*


I see I was correct.

Is this a yoink?

It's the polish you wrongly have an aversion to, crummy. Embrace the craft as well as the roughness of cinema! There's room to love the Social Network and Things!

Will assume this happens in the movie as well unless I hear differently.

Agreed with this, but I’d also add The Social Network, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Mank, in that order.

It's not like I have a complete aversion to polish. And I like The Social Network well enough (would probably be third on my Fincher list). And who is more polished than Kubrick, who is probably the greatest thing that ever happened to film.


Craft though, yeah, I view it with some suspicion. Because I always can't help but wonder what a film might potentially do if it wasn't so worried about everything coming together as a whole. Like it isn't allowed to fall apart or go in pointless tangents. Like I could possibly relate to anything that doesn't.

I haven't seen the latter two. I didn't even like the original Dragon Tattoo that much, so I don't know how much hope there is for me there. And I started Mank, and I kind of liked how convincing those opening credits were at trying to be from another generation, but then stopped watching when I realized I probably would have to pay attention to the things characters were saying, and that was going directly against the advisement of all the THC that was in my system at time

The visceral articulation is not in question. I agree that Aster is quite capable of this. What is in question would be the purpose of conjuring these primal pains. I'm not someone who feels that horror films are emotionally mechanical machines intended to regulate our adreneline in thrilling patterns, not a genre limited to touching nerves, but instead a genre which is equipt to excavate and extricate the layers of tissue beneath the reflexes. Aster can certainly articulate trauma convincingly, but what does this reveal about our nature? Most would say that this isn't the horror genre's concern, except that much of the genre is embedded with traumatic archetypes, the classic monsters being avatars of primal impulses, etc. Aster feigns depth by occult reference, the obscurity providing the shadow, but what are his films saying about psychological process, coping, projection, the rest of it. This is not foreign subject matter for the genre, but it does tend to be relegated to subtext. I think Aster might be halfway there.


I also like Aster's films, and don't want to come off as if I don't appreciate his talents, but I think I can answer some of these things better in the following response...



I don't mean to say that it's necessary for Aster to experience emotional trauma to depict it. But I don't like using the horror genre as an excuse to not go deeper, as we've seen many horror films that have adequetely respected the depth of trauma, from Caligari to Don't Look Now to Cure. I don't want to see trauma used as pavlovian stimulation without some consideration of how we process it, and this is where the third acts of Aster's films flail for me.

For some reason, I read the one title as Don’t Look Now to Cure and immediately googled it. Then it occurred to me that it was two separate titles and I then quietly did a facepalm.


I’m tired……

That sounds like a pretty gorgeous out-there film to me.

Anyway......I'll just chime in that I agree with this in general, and I'll add the point that half of Hereditary was coached in the trappings of a domestic-focused, "crumbling family" Drama, but he undermined the emotionaly relatibility of that with his consistently inconsistent characterizations, where the characters repeatedly did whatever felt "conveniant" to the scene at hand, as opposed to what would've made sense or been in line with what had been established about them, like when...