아리 애스터 공포영화에 나타나는 죽음 서사

Abstract

Director Ari Aster is an American screenwriter and film director who introduced his first feature-length horror film, Hereditary in 2018, followed by Midsommar in 2019, and Beau Is Afraid in 2023. Like other horror films, these three films include death narratives of the main characters and commonly accompany family disintegration narratives. This study analyzes the characteristics and substantive content of the death narratives parallel to the family disintegration narratives depicted in the three films. Director Ari Aster reveals the horror of modern capitalism through these death narratives. The pessimistic elements of modern capitalism that function as the cause of family disintegration in each film act as the catalyst for horror: in Hereditary, it is the unavoidable family heritage and the mother’s burden; in Midsommar, it is the absence of companionship; and in Beau Is Afraid, it is existential anxiety and a surveillance society. Furthermore, this study examines how horror is formally expressed. Firstly, Director Ari Aster visually expresses the entrapment of characters, which appears as characters being confined within the frame or trapped in symbolic images that depict the narrative of the drama. Additionally, it can be said that the three films create unique horror through the formal use of mise-en-abyme, which makes the audience aware of the existence of a higher perspective, endowing the drama with new temporality and spatiality, thereby giving the narrative a context of wholeness. In conclusion, this study aims to understand the essence of the horror signified by each film and its expression methods by analyzing the common narrative characteristics of the three works.