Nothing Can Prepare You for This Ari Aster Silent Horror Short (2024)

Beau is Afraid (2023) will have Joaquin Phoenix stuck in another family-fueled nightmare from the mind of director Ari Aster. A family with dark secrets or dark truths is what Aster usually narrows in on, reminding the audience that home is where the horror is. He sets the tone from the get-go, promising a doomed ending from the beginning, trapping his audience with this bleak foresight. His short film, Munchausen (2013), one of the many Aster made before his feature debut, hits you when you least expect it. Toni Collette may have scared you in Hereditary (2018), but it wasn’t the first time the director created a toxic mother.

RELATED: ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Review: Ari Aster’s Surreal, Ambitious, and Hilarious Journey Is Unlike Anything You’ve Ever Seen

Ari Aster Was Inspired by Pixar Movies

In Munchausen, an overprotective Mother (Bonnie Bedelia) figures out a way to keep her Boy (Liam Aiken) from going to college. Her method obviously isn’t innocent, the title taken from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, now called, Factitious disorder imposed on another, where a person falsely claims or causes illness or injury to another. From the short film’s IMDb synopsis, the Mother’s heartbreak for her Son leaving the nest takes her down a dark path where she forces him and herself into the role of caregiver and patient. In the first sentence, the synopsis makes this a unique project to Aster, describing, “A vibrant Pixar-inspired montage (think the marriage sequence in Up).” The influence from that movie about a house soaring with tied balloons, along with the color palette known to Pixar Animation Studios, is innocuous at first. With a runtime of 16 minutes, the warmth goes cold very fast.

In a 2018 interview with Collider, Aster explains how he carefully pre-plans his movies with a complete shot list, commenting, “I think I would love to make an animated film because I like working that way.” He hasn’t made an animated movie yet, although this 2013 short is his closest attempt so far. The opening montage in Munchausen isn’t the only reference to Pixar, but it’s the closest Aster gets to creating an uplifting story. The Boy packs up boxes to fill up the back of his car for the trip to college, his bedroom colored in vibrant blue and yellow. The set design for the Boy’s room even looks like Andy’s room from the Toy Story movies, but in the third entry of that series, Andy’s mom accepts his next steps in life. The Mother in Munchausen can’t stand experiencing empty nest syndrome, it hurts her too deeply. Adding on to the Toy Story and Pixar inspo is when the Mother finds her child’s old action figure while digging in the garden, making her miss him even more. This montage builds up a bittersweet emotion, with Aster including his own visual touches.

There Are Similarities between 'Munchausen' and ‘Hereditary’ and ‘Midsommar’

The title card is of a cross-stitched image, a piece of artwork like the folk-horror mural at the start of Midsommar (2019), both giving a sense that something isn’t right. Stylistic camera and editing techniques aren’t ignored. In Hereditary, Aster and frequent cinematographer, Pawel Pogorzelski, emphasizes the lack of free will that the Graham family have by zooming in the camera on a miniature replica of their house, only to transition seamlessly into their actual house. In Munchausen, it’s another Aster and Pogorzelski collab. The Boy grabs a box of his belongings, picking it up from the bedroom floor before a seamless transition to outside, as he slides the box into his car. This fluidity in the montage sells a false comfort as does a later character. An older doctor (Richard Riehle) arrives to do a checkup on the Bon, having ridden his bike to the house, coming off like an “aw-shucks,” quirky man from an idealized slice of Americana. This is the sweetness, but it can’t hide the bitterness. Like with The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), the story pivots into family horror without warning.

Toni Collette and Florence Pugh get intense leading roles in Aster’s feature films, and Bonnie Bedelia should be recognized for rising up to her own challenge. Bedelia’s performance needs to convey everything without dialogue, as Munchausen is a silent horror short, the soundscape coming from an orchestral score. The threat isn’t from a supernatural curse or a Swedish cult, the threat comes from the terrible flaw of a mother’s love becoming corrupted, which Bedelia is superb at playing. She has past horror credentials too, as Susan in the 1979 Salem’s Lot adaptation, who gets swept up in a vampire invasion. Other viewers might recognize her from the matriarch role in NBC's Parenthood, where her character lives up to family-oriented values. Probably way more people will recognize her from the first two Die Hard movies, and for good reason, the action flicks show her capable talents in a limited role. As Holly, wife to John McClane (Bruce Willis), she brings in a groundedness, reacting naturally and resiliently to the situations her husband needs to save her from. How Munchausen portrays the Mother and her motives won't be too shocking for fans of Hereditary.

'Munchausen's Mother Is a Precursor to 'Hereditary's Annie

In Aster’s 2018 feature debut, Annie should have been an Oscar-nominated role for Toni Collette – if not Oscar-winning, dammit! Mother to the Graham Family, Annie is a raw, abrasive, complex woman who makes terrible and selfish decisions. “Don’t you swear at me, you little shit! Don't you ever raise your voice at me! I am your mother!” Annie screams during a dinner verbal attack she sends her son’s way. It’s a grief-stricken, low point for her, where her use of “mother” isn’t to quell the tense relationship with her last, surviving child, it’s to regain control over him. But what else can she do? The circumstances she’s forced into, along with the family, are terrible and selfish, set into motion by their dearly departed grandmother in allegiance to a demon. Two big moments in the movie best represent how Collette’s Annie can be seen as an update on Bedelia’s Mother.

The camera stays on Peter (Alex Wolff) the morning after his sister’s death. Annie’s voice is heard in the distance, talking about a mundane errand she needs to do, unaware of the headless body left in the car. Then she wails, sobs, and screams at the sight. It’s one of the best moments in modern horror for how relentless it feels. The guttural sounds escaping from Annie go on and on at an uncomfortable length that effectively captures her anguish. Then there’s the dream sequence. Everything is off-kilter, keeping audiences unsure if it takes place in any kind of reality. Annie blurts out, to her own surprise, how she never wanted to be Peter’s mother. The two are unable to process this, their words turning into incoherent sentences as both are suddenly wet with paint thinner and a fire lights up. Annie is a mother who doesn’t know why she regrets being a parent, almost to homicidal results, unaware that her own mother did something irredeemable and irreversible to cause this distress.

Like what Aster did in Hereditary, Munchausen’s Mother isn’t judged. In the silent movie format, there are visuals to alert where her mindset is at. During the opening montage, she runs after her Boy’s car, the rearview mirror capturing her dash before she slows down in acceptance. It’s sad, kind of funny, and an intrusive response to losing a loved one to the future. The poison she uses isn’t rat poison or antifreeze, it's a vial of something called, “Feel Bad,” as if it will cause nothing more than a tummy ache. These elements represent how the Mother is desperately clinging to a maternal devotion to her child, revealing a painfully flawed character, not a horror movie monster. A scene at the end returns audiences to her running after her Boy from earlier, this time for a haunting, bleaker recreation. The Mother’s acts are monstrous, yet in the end, she suffers a great cost, too.

Ari Aster Focuses on Horror in the Home

Talking to Collider about Beau is Afraid, Ari Aster realizes how scary family-centric trauma and horror can be, stating, “They're the people that we're closest to. If it's the family you're born into, then you don't have any choice in the matter, but you also can't ever really detach from them, and I think that's a very interesting situation.” Munchausen is a silent film, which isn't too dissimilar to his talking features as they are known for including a lack of communication between characters that leads to their doom. In Munchausen, a lack of spoken dialogue lets the imagery and score set an ominous tone, no matter if the poison is in a cutesy vial. Beau is Afraid will unravel a story over a 3-hour runtime, while Munchausen is bite-sized for fans of the director. It’s short but definitely not sweet.