Ari Aster’s Unexpected Picks: Comedy Films That Shaped a Horror Auteur
Ari Aster, famed for his unsettling horror films, shares his surprising list of favourite comedies, revealing the offbeat humour that influences his work.
There’s a curious overlap between what unsettles and what amuses, and Ari Aster, best known for his deeply disturbing films, seems to thrive in that ambiguous space. While his reputation rests on the likes of Hereditary and Midsommar, both notorious for their intensity, Aster’s work is laced with a peculiar brand of humour. Sometimes, the extremity of his stories leaves audiences with little choice but to laugh, if only to relieve the tension. Beau is Afraid, for instance, is less a straightforward comedy and more a relentless barrage of discomfort, where laughter feels like a reflex rather than a release.
Given this, it’s not entirely clear what sort of comedies might appeal to Aster himself. One might imagine him gravitating towards the bleak absurdities of Charlie Kaufman—perhaps I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a film that masquerades as a puzzle of despair but is, at its core, a darkly comic meditation on hopelessness. Or maybe he’d favour the chilly, deadpan wit of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, a film that manages to blend violence, animal mayhem, and self-mutilation into a singularly odd comedic experience.
From Satire to Slapstick: Aster’s Comedy Favourites
As it happens, there’s no need for guesswork. In a 2023 interview, Aster laid out his comedic preferences with characteristic candour.
“I’ll just knock some off,”
he remarked, before rattling off a list that veered from the classic to the unconventional. Among his selections were Dr Strangelove, Naked Gun, and Airplane—films that have long been celebrated for their sharp wit and slapstick sensibilities. He also included Annie Hall and Defending Your Life, both of which take a more offbeat approach to the romantic comedy formula.
Perhaps more surprising were his nods to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop and Starship Troopers. Neither is typically filed under comedy, yet Aster clearly sees the satirical edge in Verhoeven’s work. RoboCop, set in a dystopian Detroit, is infamous for its over-the-top violence—so much so that certain scenes had to be trimmed. Yet, as Aster recognises, the excess is part of the joke. Starship Troopers, meanwhile, pushes genre conventions to such extremes that its satire was lost on many critics, who took its militaristic bombast at face value. Aster, however, is unambiguous in his admiration:
“Verhoeven is a hero of mine, somebody I’m always thinking about,”
he explained, noting that the Dutch director’s influence was very much present during the making of Beau is Afraid.
Dark Laughs and Unclassifiable Gems
Aster’s taste for comedy doesn’t stop at the mainstream or the satirical. He’s also drawn to films that tread into more precarious territory. Four Lions, Chris Morris’s 2010 black comedy about a group of inept would-be terrorists in London, made his list. The film, much like Morris’s earlier work on the series Jam, is difficult to pigeonhole—its blend of unsettling subject matter and sharp dialogue has earned it a reputation as a pitch-black classic.
Rounding out Aster’s selection is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, a 1985 film that has never quite received its due. The story follows a hapless office worker as he stumbles through a series of increasingly bizarre nocturnal misadventures in Lower Manhattan. Absurd, at times grotesque, and laced with a Kafkaesque sense of futility, it’s a film that resists easy categorisation. Of all the titles Aster mentioned, this one perhaps most closely mirrors the spirit of his own work: surreal, uncomfortable, and laced with a very particular sense of humour.