Fans of Ari Aster are probably most familiar with his most recent films, Midsommar and Hereditary. 

Hereditary is the 2018 A24 film that has a critically-acclaimed performance by Toni Colette. Midsommar, also distributed by A24, was released in 2019 and starred Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor and William Jackson Harper.

However, those films have something in common with the controversial short film, The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. The 34-year-old director helmed all three films.

In an interview with Shadow and Act almost 10 years ago when he was 24, Aster spoke about the film and if he was concerned about how people would perceive it.

“Not really,” he said. “Were we aware that this would be polarizing? Of course. We anticipated some backlash, especially in the beginning (when the idea was still fresh to us), but I lived with this premise for so long that I basically forgot how disturbing it was. Once we committed to the project, the challenge wasn’t to find new ways of keeping it shocking or outrageous for 30 minutes; it was to tell the story as dramatically as we could, and to keep true to our original intentions without overstepping our own boundaries of taste. We also had to fight to raise the budget ourselves, so convincing people to donate money to this “role-reversing incest whatsit” was more difficult than releasing it to an anonymous group of people.”

Aster’s next film, Beau Is Afraid, is rumored to star Joaquin Phoenix and currently has a release date that is to be announced.