The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011)

PC3's Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness!

I don’t typically review short films, simply because there’s usually not enough to unpack into a full review with my rating system. But I saw some folks discussing The Strange Thing About the Johnsons on Facebook and decided to give it go and write-up my thoughts.

The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is an Ari Aster pre-Hereditary and pre-Midsommar flick. And in this early film one can already see Aster’s desire to shock the audience. I’m not giving anything away saying what the film is about because it reveals itself in the first scene, so. . .it’s about a kid/young man who is sexually obsessed with his father.

Yeah, it’s awkward. Being a film at just under thirty minutes, there isn’t too much room to explore the idea of the story or add any complexity. I’m kind of thankful for this. Even with the skeletal plot and the absence of actual graphic scenes, The Strange Thing About the Johnsons still manages to make you uncomfortable as hell.

The first scene depicts young Isaiah choking his chicken under the covers to a picture of his dad. And it just gets more disturbing from there. But I think Aster could have maximized the affect if we’d stayed with this younger version of Isiah rather than jumping ahead fourteen years after the first few minutes. The beginning sequence, for me, was the most disturbing and shocking of the film. Aster immediately showed his hand, leaving little else to reveal for the last twenty-five minutes or so.

The only place I could find to watch this movie was on YouTube, and the picture quality was not good at all. So that probably contributes to my feeling that The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is just okay. It punches you in the face right from the beginning, then just kind of lets you bleed. Though there are additional disturbing scenes, they don’t punch you in the face anymore.

PC3’s Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness!

Gore - 1

Special Effects - 1

Nudity/Sexuality - 0

Wow Factor - 5

Acting - 6

Fear Factor - 2

Story/Plot/Originality - 6

Cinematography/Atmosphere - 4

Sound/Music - 5

Fun Factor - 2

The Strange Thing About the Johnsons gets a total PHEMSA score of 32. It’s an interesting piece and an early glimpse at Ari Aster. And it’s only thirty minutes. There’s certainly worse ways to spend your time. If you can find it somewhere other than YouTube you can probably have a better viewing experience.