This past Saturday, I saw Boots Riley’s new kaleidoscopic feast of sight and sound, I Love Boosters. In as few words as possible, the film is about a group of women using their knack for pulling off robin-hood-esque heists to take down a malignant titan of the fashion industry. While its buffet of stylistic leaps take center stage, it's evident that ILB focus on the importance of connection was the director’s primary takeaway. This is a film intrinsically tied to community and the steadfast belief that society, when working together for the common good, will always beat out capitalistic gain. I will admit, ever since Eddington’s 2025 release, I have been using that film’s take on the current zeitgeist to assess any subsequent film hovering around a similar sentiment. While there may be more obvious through-lines between Eddington and other films like One Battle After Another or Bugonia, it's ILB that I feel follows up on Aster’s vision most succinctly. 

For the uninitiated, Eddington is a snapshot of a small, New Mexican town in May 2020 as its constituents face Covid-19, racial tension, and a heated mayoral rivalry. It’s a bleak take on modern politics but one not without its moral merit. Even the director, Ari Aster has said that if he had to synthesize a takeaway for the movie, it would be that we need to join together and unite, instead of being trapped in our own solipsistic and party-tailored algorithms. ILB takes the socialist sentiment and removes the real-world names and parties unlike Eddington, choosing to depict fantastical scenarios that ultimately still lead to a finale that the viewer can envision for an ideal modern society. Riley focuses on the optimism of the human condition, taking the idea that a small, seemingly insignificant group of people can make revolutionary changes within their own lives, their communities, and even the world. . 

Eddington and ILB share many ideals, while inhabiting opposite ends of the sentimental spectrum within drastically varying landscapes. Eddington takes place in a dry, isolated, desert town that is trapped in the past. Sevilla County’s entire foundation is cracking; the earth, the beliefs, the infrastructure, and even relationships. It’s the same for ILB, but it exists within a vibrant, surrealist, sprawling cityscape where everything is hustle and bustle. Eddington solely takes place in its eponymous town but still manages to reflect the world at large. ILB not only travels outside of The San-Francisco Bay Area, but it goes all the way to China. This connects their cause with greater injustices faced by the factory workers creating the clothes for Christie Smith, the megalomaniacal, fashion-mogul depicted by Demi Moore. While Riley’s movie is not explicitly taking place in the 2020s, the whimsical world is still structured in a way that mirrors the present. Both directors play with scale, time, and landscape, yet they are able to portray the importance of a united community and the downfalls of division. 

In today’s fully digital, artificially-generated age, it doesn’t matter where you live as long as you own a smartphone, or have access to the internet. Humans have never been so individualized and myopic while being so tapped into each other's curated worlds through social media. While the internet can be a place for cross-cultural community, ILB and Eddington narratively play around with human reliance on smartphones and their isolating effects. For ILB, the phone is juxtaposed with a multi-purpose teleportation/deconstruction/acceleration device. In Eddington, the phone and gun are both weaponized, with the latter being a metaphorical amplification for how internet voices can effectively silence another’s, thus ending their reign or scope of influence. ILB uses factory worker Jianhu's (played by Poppy Liu) teleporting device as a means of empowerment, expansion and growth, directly juxtaposing the silencing nature of technological isolation. Once Jianhu enters the narrative, the boosters use the device to send a message to Christie Smith by transporting all of her cheaply-made clothes back to the factory workers in China. The workers, who are becoming increasingly ill by the factory processes, are able to amplify their voices with this machine, thus making it the inverse of the phone. In opposition, Christie Smith uses her phone as a literal megaphone to demonize these socialist bandits, continuously going live on social media to condemn and attack the boosters and factory employees. She uses her phone, this tiny shallow box, as a weapon. Eddington’s Joe Cross (played by Joaquin Phoenix) uses his phone as his front-facing weapon: using it to spread false information–like Smith–, while he uses his firearms as the card up his sleeve. Christie Smith herself may not use firearms to get what she wants, but she uses her gang of skin-suit clad “people” to cause further community division. When Joe Cross can’t get what he wants through public facing means, he chooses the most severe option to silence his opponents, murder. And where does this ultimately leave him? If you’ve seen the film, you know he ends up disabled in a vegetative state. He’s left silenced and powerless, much like Christie Smith, albeit her fate is far less severe. 

Both Eddington and ILB employ tiers of villainy, causing viewers to wonder who really is the bad guy. Each evil-doer lurking beneath the surface proves to be more sinister than the former. Christie Smith is the over-the-top supervillain of ILB, and while comical and not acting alone, she does represent the larger, corrupt, capitalist system. Eddington’s villains are more abundant than its heroes, primarily demonstrated through the protagonist’s actions. Joe Cross is villainous, but he is not the primary antagonist as he rivals Ted Garcia (played by Pedro Pascal). Garcia could be compared to Christie Smith, however, Garcia is only about as powerful as the skin-wearing, animatronic, humanoids that do Smith’s bidding. Eddington’s direct antagonistic counterpart for Smith is an actual agent of capitalism itself: SolidgoldMagikarp. The overarching villain of Aster’s story is this data center which serves as a looming metaphor for authoritarian control. Joe Cross believes he is fighting the good cause when he runs for mayor due to his individualised and flawed worldview. The issue is,  he's already so distanced from truth that his “weaponizing” only aids in furthering the real evil’s aims. Through his acts of violence, he unknowingly becomes a puppet of Garcia’s original agenda. The data center–much like Smith’s Metro Designer company–claims to be “for the people”, a grand culmination of identities and communities coming together. In reality, they exploit those communities under the guise of aiding them, instead draining them of their resources, livelihoods, and individuality. While Joe Cross is not an ideal protagonist, he does bring up valid points regarding the risks the data center perpetrates. Like the sandblasting of denim in the factories in ILB, Joe Cross claims the data center is making the residents of Sevilla County sick. Both films’ “villains” aim to perpetuate the idea that self-individualization is humanity’s solution for the future. Data centers use your information to craft a personalized algorithm, further distancing you from different voices, opinions, and cultures. Clothes are equally distancing as they promote classist ideals and the illusion of “being unique.” Riley mocks consumer culture with the egregiously priced monochromatic collections in Christie Smith’s stores, nauseatingly unique through unicolor monopolies yet still inaccessible to the masses. While unnecessary, the post credit scene of ILB does illustrate the cyclical nature of self-service and how society is being kept in this destructive loop. The spiral of hair, despite being on the nose, did put a nice end cap on the nature of conflict. It is exactly that conflict that data centers are fed to constantly create new ultra-specific conflicts that further distract us from the overarching crises.  

The films end in two different places, and while it seems easy for critics to call out Eddington as a promotion of baleful beliefs, both Aster and Riley seem to believe in the same solution. The boosters win because they put aside their respective niche conflicts to combat Big Corp. Even at the end of ILB when Corvette (Keke Palmer) has the chance to date LaKeith Stanfield’s monster-morphing mystery-man, she dismisses him to join her friends. Corvette is consumed with her own revenge and motives for most of the movie, and it takes Sade (Naomi Ackie’s character) to finally put her in her place and set her straight. Corvette had been silencing the rest of the boosters and in finally relinquishing some of that selfishness, they’re able to achieve success and expose Smith. Palmer’s character may be our de-facto protagonist, but we as the audience are explicitly being instructed not to place her any higher than her boosting family. Joe Cross loses because he follows his own selfish destructive lengths, effectively making him as immoral as the data center. I recommend anyone watch Eddington and ILB back to back, preferably with Aster’s film first as his dark, comedic tone can be balanced by Riley’s whimsical nature. Eddington presents a grim model of the problem and ILB takes it and suggests the possibility for a colorful future.

The two paragraphs below are excerpts from Michael Koresky’s interview with Ari  Aster through The Lincoln Center on May 1, 2018) https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-ari-aster/

“And that is something I wanted to do here. To make a film that betrays you on every level, where you become invested in all these people, and what happens to them is not fair. You have to contend with it. My biggest problem with recent horror films is that I feel like there’s this agenda—I don’t know if it’s a studio agenda—to let you off the hook. And if everyone gets fucked at the end, they make sure you’re not invested in anybody. And the films that always got to me were operating on more of an existential level, where it’s like, okay, we’re going to pose the problems of life, things tapping into your most primal fears—death, does anybody know anybody?—and not resolving anything, just rubbing your face in the inevitability of all that stuff. That stuff’s not pleasant and we think we go to horror movies to avoid them. We want to go on an experience, we want to be riveted, taken on a ride, and we want to be scared. And I think with Hereditary, and other films I’m referencing, they turn on you, they ask, so do you want to be scared? And the only way I know how to do that is to go into my fears and what bothers me.

What are your fears?

I’m afraid of dying alone. I’m afraid of being responsible for something horrible happening to someone I love and then not being forgiven. I’m afraid of somebody in my family turning on me. That’s something I’m not even aware of consciously, but my nightmares as a kid were always about someone who matters most to me changing. Even if you go back to Freud’s essay on the uncanny—and I’m probably misrepresenting what he said—he says that horror is when the home becomes unhomelike, unheimlich. And that is something I was thinking about a lot in this film. I wanted to make a home that became something malign and unrecognizable by the end. And that’s where the miniatures come in as well. It’s a replica of the real thing. It is the thing, but it’s not the thing. That is your mother, but it’s not your mother.” 

Everything and everyone can be intimidating, so we nervously laugh and continue on our way. 

This warped twist on the old adage “life’s a bitch” has never felt more fitting than when describing Ari Aster’s filmography. We crave comfort—a reassuring hand on the shoulder reminding us things will be okay. Aster has built a career out of denying us that comfort, swapping it for bleak catharsis.

I use the word catharsis intentionally—it’s one Aster seems to favor . For him, catharsis isn’t resolution or relief. It’s the raw, chaotic embrace of the grotesque. He’s said that he dislikes “letting audiences off the hook,” and that philosophy drags me back to my earliest memories of horror—when I couldn’t even bear to watch scary movies, shielded by my parents and by my own fragile nerves. It took years before I could stomach horror’s visceral shocks. But even then, I clung to the idea  that narrative justice needed to be served to feel satisfied. Heroes had to survive. Villains had to fall. When they didn’t, I felt betrayed.

That’s Aster’s gift: betrayal. More than most filmmakers, he weaponizes that feeling. In Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau is Afraid, the emotional gut-punch isn’t just sadness or fear—it’s the breaking of an unspoken deal between storyteller and audience. The deal that says: this will make sense, this will resolve, and you will get closure. With Aster, you don’t. And somehow that betrayal feels honest and even comforting in its bleakness.

Aster’s obsession with artifice ties directly into this betrayal. He’s spoken admiringly of Peter Greenaway and his film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover—a film that Aster claims, “ruined” him. Watching it for the first time at 25, I immediately understood. Greenaway’s dollhouse aesthetic traps you in the frame. There’s no cutaway, no relief. Just the slow, suffocating madness of watching wide-eyed at some of the most sickening depths of human depravity. Aster does the same. His films are tableaus (Hereditary most obviously), stage-like prisons where the audience gawks like zoo visitors. But he goes further—he traps us inside these dioramas, tied to the characters’ unraveling minds, until we are no longer distant observers but helpless participants.

Aster’s real trick isn’t just the rug-pull plot twist. It’s the way he gaslights the audience. He litters clues everywhere—but they’re so buried in strangeness, they seem like noise. We think: “Am I overthinking this?” But we’re not. In Aster’s world, paranoia is not only justified—it’s the only sane response. The dread is real. The trap is real. We ignored the signs because we wanted comfort, and we were left with the truth.

Despite their intrinsic darkness,  Aster’s films aren’t pure misery, I actually feel the opposite while watching them. They’re laced with absurd, bitter humor—the kind that bubbles up when things get so unbearable, we can’t help but laugh. He refuses sentimentality, resolution, and safety. Beau is Afraid perfects this. Its ending—Beau drowning as an amphitheater full of conspirators silently leave—felt like a slap the first time I saw it. But on rewatch, I respected it. I even laughed. The ending didn’t matter; the chaos of the journey did. Once you let go of the need for logic or closure, the comedy shines through.

That isn’t to say Aster can’t tell a proper story. Hereditary and Midsommar prove he can. But now he’s deconstructing that ability, stripping narrative down to its nervous system. And why wouldn’t he? He’s confessed his greatest fear is dying alone. Beau’s ending—the quiet, unceremonious death watched by no one who cares—feels like the most honest expression of that fear. Life reduces us to spectators. Death makes us truly alone. And the world keeps going.

But there’s something else—something oddly hopeful. At the Cannes press conference for Eddington, Aster said a takeaway of his new film’s takeaway is simple: “re-engage with one another. That surprised me. For all the doom and paranoia of his films, there’s this call for connection buried beneath. It may be a twisted, corrupted, cultish connection—but connection nonetheless. Hereditary’s cult, Midsommar’s Härga, the cult of Mona Wassermann, they’re communities built on false truths that serve only the powerful.  They serve as warnings: this is what happens when collective unity dies and is replaced by control.

Technology and paranoia fuel the dynamic between power and isolation. In Beau, screens and surveillance crush the sense of self. In Eddington, from what little we know, these forces are tightened. Aster isn’t preaching—he’s showing the  suffocation of individual thought by programmed realities, by the death of shared truth. His villains—Paimon’s cult, the Härga, MW Corp—rewrite history and truth to expand their control. They are able to succeed in this because no one agrees on what’s real anymore.

This is the trap: if you try to escape, you die. Peter jumps out the window. Connie and Simon protest the Härga, Beau pushes against his mother, all doomed. Their death is their escape. Annie tries burning her children alive in hopes that death can provide true solace. The family can’t even die from their own will, it is predestined. But what about the members of the ruling group? Even the Härga are controlled in their death. While not confirmed, Aster did point out even Paimon’s cult may have suffered after the events of the film. Who is to say once they successfully invoked Paimon, they didn’t relinquish all control over their free will and ended up suffering  immediately.  In these worlds, every fabric of a lifecycle has been sown before one is even born. So what’s left? Do we surrender? Or do we just laugh? Probably both.

In the Aster universe, there are only two certainties: everything will fall apart, and the collapse will force you to crack a smile, in the darkest way possible. There is no comfort. But in the absurd, nervous laughter we share as the amphitheater empties, Aster delivers unto us a type of freedom-a collective release only possible through catharsis. 

FInal Note: As I was in the process of writing this, I noticed that outside my apartment on the patio floor, lay a dead bird. Already infested with flies, I couldn't help but stare, probably longer than I should have. It was morbid and it made me sad, but I accepted it and eventually walked away. This occurrence reminded me of something-the way Aster’s films draw us in to the point we have to stare at the atrocity, even if our brain tells us to look away. It’s an acceptance of the negative while simultaneously an embrace to move on. At the same time as I was writing about death, he was waiting right outside my door. 

I wrote the following piece minutes after discovering the deceased creature. 

There’s A Dead Bird Outside My Door 

There’s a dead bird outside my door-on my porch

I had cracked the blinds quarter to seven-i did not peek outside

It’s 9:09 now and It surprised me-a hatchling in baby-form

But it did not shock me-I challenged myself

To radically accept 

That the flies and their eggs burrowed deep

Will writhe inside this vessel and emerge as maggots on top

Just squirming white specs from where i stand 

Two days ago, I killed an old fly with a dollar store washcloth 

So maybe the  flies on my porch are inviting me to watch their feast

Feet apart-the bird, the flies, and I 

Separated by off tracked plastic and clouded glass

One eye open-that’s how I’ll remember the bird

I’m paralyzed  and can’t transport the body

I’m afraid I’d crush its insignificant weight in my palm

I spotted a snapping turtle as I rolled down the road leading my apartment

I stopped and looked if I could maneuver it

The idea of the next car speeding by without noticing-the black speck disappearing behind the rising of the muggy heat-the june concrete

It upsets the ulcer inside my pit

Its an irritant that erupts when I acknowledge that the slack-

It will linger

But distancing with bandaids in hopes of eluding injury is a sliding glass door

Too weak to handle you

One day, the morning fog and murky glass will unify and it’ll all look the same to you

And when you hear the treble of buzzing coming from outside

It will not be outside anymore-it will stretch your isolation-it’ll be tangible

The glass is pathetic your human form as you sift through it

When it shatters, your body wrests backwards

And underfoot–a crunch

It rings and echoes deep inside your own noise

The bones-it’s only been two days?

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."–Mitch Albom

Death is inevitable. It naturally permeates every crevice of existence. In art, every genre and its respective subtypes encompass the circle of life and the inevitability of death, but none wear the badge so proudly and unabashedly as horror. As the collective experience becomes more complex over time, so too does the landscape of horror cinema.

Fundamentally, horror functions using the same elements of narrative tension as the genres of thriller and drama, those being anxiety and the relief from escaping that state of fear. From an evolutionary standpoint, fear is rooted in instinctual avoidance of death. It’s disheartening and chilling, regardless of how much therapy one undergoes or how much radical acceptance is practiced just to acknowledge that it will, one day, happen.

Don't think about it. Put it away and lock it up. Media typically chooses to handle death in tender, often overly sentimental ways. This makes sense, not everyone wants their media always shoving mortality in their face. Horror films are not exempt, but unlike any other genre, horror usually refuses to treat death as something soft. In films like Bring Her Back, death is everything but sentimental. It's often therapeutic and cathartic, but not in a way that makes you sick from the usual saccharine excess. Instead, it offers an eruption of tension built upon emotional, then physical suspense.

The end result of Bring Her Back is an ascent into death through matte black bluntness. The film centers on Andy and Piper, foster children reassigned to a new mother after the sudden death of their father. Like Talk To Me, the directors’ first film, Bring Her Back focuses on the all-encompassing nature of grief and the profound physical and mental toll it exacts. The dynamic between the children and their father isn’t explored in full detail, but it’s portrayed with enough nuance to convey the children’s deep, complex feelings. Despair is present from the start, but true dread arrives when Andy and Piper meet their new step-mother Laura, and step-brother, Oliver.

On the surface, Oliver embodies physical horror. He is the manifestation of evil in the Philippou brothers' universe. What makes him brilliant is how Laura, their mother, portrayed with immense dimensionality by Sally Hawkins, is able to counter his physical evil with a more emotional and spiritual one. Laura is a familiar archetype, but her path and ultimate destination are anything but predictable. I’ve never been so thoroughly gaslit into sympathizing with a character the way I was with Laura.

Bring Her Back is as cold as they come, so it might come as a surprise to some to hear the final shot nearly brought a tear to my eye. Its emotional impact eclipsed the bodily reactions and physical horror. The finale is heart-wrenching, but it forces the audience to question  their own threshold for empathy. It’s a final moment of potential gaslighting by the directors, bordering on emotional manipulation, but in the best way. The film takes viewers on a rollercoaster of visceral emotions, with the most powerful moments often coming not from gore, but from stripped human pathos. That emotional core is what makes the narrative linger, when you're falling asleep, or moments before clocking into work, these moments hit at random intervals because they’re real. The grief, despair, and love are remarkably tangible. So much so, they help us relate to our own suffering, and even to our own inevitable end.

That’s where the circular iconography hit me hardest. It wasn’t in connection to a cult or spiritual tradition, but in representing us all. Each of the four main characters reflects a fragment of humanity, splintered and spotlighted throughout the plot.

While I had some stylistic grievances with the cinematography, I applaud the Philippou brothers for their unrelenting use of close-ups and long lenses. They force characters into the audience’s space and keep them there. Like death, the discomfort is always nearby. It never lets up, and neither does this film. From the opening frame to the finale, from demonic fetus to corpse, the 104-minute runtime is saturated with palpable dread and despair. Each character in this narrative is intricately woven and perhaps the most perplexing is death itself. From Laura’s comments about the soul remaining in the body, to notions of spiritual reincarnation, death isn’t portrayed as finite or neatly packaged. The film doesn’t attempt to solve its mystery, but it offers a compelling perspective on life’s final chapter, or at least what we think that chapter might be. That ambiguity was strangely one of the most uplifting aspects of the film. The film chooses not to end where most would.

As for the gore, it’s not hard to understand why some audience members find certain choices excessive. I didn’t. In fact, I could have used more violence. What was included was used intelligently and sparingly, but hit hard and coursed through every nerve. The gore, like grief, is a signature of the Phillipou brothers. It’s prolonged, intimate, and forces you to look. You cringe, you wince, but by the end, you feel purged. The filmmakers have regurgitated their own vision into the audience, similarly to the instructions for the film’s hellish ritual. It’s the symbolic intertwining of alabaster and crimson. 

Demonic possession and malevolent entities appear in both Talk To Me and Bring Her Back. While these elements are often viewed as devaluing of humanity, these filmmakers tenderly embrace the human condition even in the darkness pits.  By the end of both films, you feel for the protagonist and believe they care deeply for the people for whom they’ve been fighting. Even if they fail, the distance they were willing to travel for love feels universal. It’s bleak but not devoid of all hope.  I didn’t leave the theater feeling solemn, I left inspired—hopeful that something larger exists beyond myself and beyond  menial conflicts of my daily life. The circle, as cliché as it sounds, I found to be used poignantly. It represents our spiritual togetherness, even when we feel most alone. Even Laura, who commits unspeakable acts—seems to be driven by care and compassion. Her obsession with bringing her daughter back eclipses everything else, yet again reinforcing the limitlessness of love. The foster care narrative hammers the nail on the head. Love and connection transcend biology and bloodlines.

Art exists to combat assumptions and offer twisted, yet meaningful, insights. That’s horror’s greatest beauty, its capacity for self-reflection and existential questioning. I understand that films like Bring Her Back may be a bit extreme for mainstream audiences, but  I genuinely believe it has something for everyone—depending on where they are in life. It’s hard to watch, and emotionally draining, but ultimately rewarding. And if you’re unwilling to experience that discomfort, then why consume art at all? If it's only for escape and entertainment, that’s fine. But for me, cinema has always had the power to transform my mood and macroscopically my life.

Horror is filled with atrocity, just like real life. But when a horror film aligns closely with reality, it makes coping feel possible. Despite what others may say, I found the ending of Bring Her Back hopeful. Its lack of closure regarding certain characters left room for optimism—especially for Piper and Oliver.

At almost 26, I find myself more preoccupied with death. I know 26 is relatively young, but time feels more fleeting . I’m more accepting of its passing, though I still struggle with the uncertainty of what’s to come. Ingmar Bergman once said he made The Seventh Seal to confront his fear of death. I haven’t made a feature film yet, but watching films often feels like doing our own personal confrontation. Case in point: Bring Her Back. Facing death head-on lessens its weight. It’s no longer an ocean of darkness, but a storm cloud—still ominous, but manageable.

As someone who often battles helplessness and suicidal thoughts, it's films like Bring Her Back that, figuratively, bring me back. As strange as it sounds, horror is an outlet. It channels my frustrations and expels them in a healthy way. I come away with a clearer understanding of my own pain—and can see past it. The characters in horror often go through hell, literally or metaphorically. And while these stories don’t erase real-world suffering, they deepen our empathy. They encourage us to see others with compassion instead of detachment.

Violence and horror aren’t for everyone and that’s valid. But I can’t support the claim that “violence and gore are pointless and exist only for shock value.” That randomness and brutality are tragically poetic mirrors of real life. Bring Her Back subverted my expectations more than once, particularly around character deaths. That unpredictability is a powerful metaphor for mortality. There is no right time. No guaranteed time.

Often, the same people who denounce horror for its violence are those with the privilege and power to make change, but who instead look away. They blame media for inciting violence—but for fans of horror, it’s the opposite. Horror is how we cope. It may seem trivial to some, but ask the millions whose lives have been saved—emotionally, mentally, spiritually—by this genre. Horror lets us wear our fears openly. When we watch a scary movie with the lights off, we are participating in exposure therapy. We are turning pain into meaning.