We imagine that Aster’s next film will be of similar nightmare fuel, even if there are a few more chuckles along the way. Indeed, this is exactly what the filmmaker teased while speaking with the University of California, Santa Barbara’s A.S. Program Board (via The Daily Nexus and Slashfilm). “All I know is that it’s gonna be four hours long, over 17 [years of age],” Aster told aspiring filmmakers about his new screenplay he just finished a draft on. Additionally, he said it would be a “nightmare comedy.” The notion of it being a straight out comedy or four hours long might be a bit of hyperbole (that or Aster really wants to challenge the assertion “brevity is the soul of wit”). However, a longer film that defies genre norms is very much in keeping with the filmmaker of Midsommar. Unlike many other 90-minute horror films released by A24, that sun-drenched psychedelic horror was two minutes shy of two and a half hours in its theatrical cut. The director’s cut was even longer with a running time of two hours and 51 minutes. Also Midsommar, like Hereditary before it, had a subtle sense of macabre humor about its characters’ actions and quirks—at least before they did inexpressibly terrible things to one another.
