Warning: This article will discuss a film on sexual abuse and incest.
The filmmaker Ari Aster exploded in the world of cinema with the release of “Hereditary” in 2018. This film was structured around a demonic cult and the magic glyphs they used to carry out ritual sacrifices, but more, it was intergenerational guilt, barely repressed of rage and the dissolution of family unity. Toni Collette gives better career performance as a woman who sort of hated her own mother, and who does not have a little depressed resentment towards her own family.
Aster followed this with “Midsommar”, another film on cult sacrifices, this time completed by the murder / suicide of the protagonist family. Like “Hereditary”, “Midsommar” was deeply loved by the horror community, and is often considered an example of the style of the A24 house. Florence Pugh also gives an astonishing performance as a young mourning woman whose terrible boyfriend hates her. In 2023, Aster made the Dour, panicked and deliberately difficult “beautiful is afraid”, a Freudian panic of the highest order, fixed either in the 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 diving into the darkest corners of guilt and taboo, and his short thesis, “The Strange Thing About The Johnsons”, was no exception. The short screening at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2011, and no one knew what to do with his representations of domestic violence and multiple scenes of incest father-son.
The strange thing about the Johnsons sought to represent the worst taboos
The story of “The Strange Thing About The Johnsons” is deliberately off -putting. Billy Mayo plays Sidney Johnson, a respected poet who was married to his wife, Joan (Angela Bullock). At the start of the film, Sidney enters their son, Isaiah (Carlton Jeffrey as a boy, Brandon Greenhouse in adulthood) having fun. Sidney goes out with tact … not realizing that Isaiah looked at a photo of Sidney. This ultimately turns into an abusive relationship in which Isaiah systematically begins to sexually abuse her father.
Years later, when Isaiah is about to get married, Sidney wrote a confession on the incestuous abuses of his son. The confession inspires Isaiah to continue acts of sexual assault against her father. Joan deliberately blocks the noises of the cries she hears through the walls. Finally, Sidney will be killed and Joan will face Isaiah about his acts of sexual abuse. Their argument will lead to bloody violence.
Aster spoke of his inspiration for his dark and twisted short film in an interview in 2011, and he said that his goal for “Johnsons” was to crack taboos that had not even been considered before. In his words:
“We were talking about topics too taboo to be explored, so we arrived at taboos that were not even Taboos because they were so unfathomable, and the most popular was that of a son assaulting his father. “It should never be transformed into a film!” So it started at this level, but from there, it evolved in something very different. “”
He insisted in this same interview that the film was not supposed to be a comment on the breed, and that the Johnsons are black simply because he wanted to throw his good friend, Greenhouse, in the main role. (ASTER is white.)
The strange thing about the Johnsons has been disclosed online
Aster said he knew that his film would invite controversy, although he admitted that he had taken him so long to do, he had finally lost sight of the shocking nature of the subject. He also aspired to make “Johnsons” like a drama, not as an exploitation film, telling an emotionally honest story of pain and abuse, but also presents it as a satire, with a horrible and bloody termination. Aster said that “Johnsons” should be considered a family melodrama of the 1950s like those that Douglas Sirk or Nicholas Ray made.
Aster revealed, however, that while the film went around through various film festivals, it was illegally disclosed online. Online criticisms were, perhaps predictable, shocked by the subject, and you can easily find the short film itself, and any number of video criticisms, on YouTube. The leak apparently reinforced the profile of the film, even if Aster did not get money for the bootlegs. The experts quickly put all kinds of descriptors on the film, the disturbing, disgusting, intense calling, etc.
Finally, the film was examined by Malcolm Harris for the Huffington Post, and he found that online experts did not very well understand the goal of the film. 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 dark secrets that were kept in his community. He expected that all the survivors of sexual abuse would certainly see their experience reflected with precision in Aster’s film, and that it is certainly not the operating film that online experts seemed to think. It is a horror film, perhaps, but it is not there for fear or thrills. This is there for the horror of the real world.
