Hereditary (2018)

August 27, 2018

Directed by: Ari Aster

Written by: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Miley Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne

Budget: $10,000,000

Quote: "Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you're in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but you're sister is dead! She's gone forever!"

Trivia: In an interview, Alex Wolff explains that he wanted to actually break his own nose for the scene where his character slams his head into a desk. When it was time for the scene to be shot, Wolff slams his head into the desk only to discover that the top was foam and the bottom was hard. He dislocated his jaw (which is a previous injury the actor has had) for the scene.

I started this horror journey back in the beginning of July and when asking my friends what horror/scary movies I should watch the two that came up over and over were A Quiet Place and Hereditary. A Quiet Place was good but I think Hereditary is great. It is actually a legitimately scary movie! It's a slow burn so if you are planning on seeing it, give it patience, it more than pays off in the end.

What really makes the so engaging is Toni Collette's performance as a woman being emotionally, psychologically, and eventually physically torn apart. She puts forth the performance of a lifetime here. Also, Hereditary does not rely on cheap jump scares or gore, but instead creates a dark atmosphere with subtle (and not so subtle) unnerving visuals. It reminds me a lot of the more low key scenes from The Exorcist, subtle satanic imagery and a general uneasiness as you realize something is going wrong. Also, it is really unclear what is happening until the very end, and even then it is confusing.

All this makes me really surprised to read that CinemaScore (a market research firm) found that audience members gave the film a D+ on average. Browsing through the user reviews on IMDB, the biggest complaint seems to be that it is too long, the plot too confusing, and they didn't like the ending. The movie, at 2 hours and 7 minutes, is pretty long, I'll give them that. The filmmakers probably cut of trimmed off twenty minutes without losing much. However, I have to disagree with the comment about the plot. The plot and characters are not supposed to make total sense earlier in the film, it is this confusion that makes the film so compelling. What is happening? By the end of the film, most plot points become clear and the couple story elements that are unresolved left me thinking about the film. Thinking about a film for days (or weeks or months) after watching it, is the sign of a great film for me. The last argument about the ending I completely disagree with. I don't want to say too much about it, in case anyone reading this hasn't watched it yet but it reminded me a lot of the ending from Rosemary's Baby.

The film is about a family whose grandmother passes away and fairly quickly in the film, the daughter is also killed (she is beheaded when she sticks her head out of a car window while her brother tries to drive her to the hospital). The mother, Annie (Toni Collette), while struggling to cope with these two loses, befriends a woman at a loss support group. The friend eventually introduces her to a way to communicate with the daughter through a seance with her daughter's sketchbook. Afterwards, the movie and the rest of the family begin to experience increasingly intense paranormal encounters and vivid nightmares. The mother dreams that she tells her son that she never wanted to give birth to him and tried to miscarry him. In another dream she follows a trail of ants to her son who is covered in the ants. Eventually, Annie tries to burn the sketchbook but since it is tied to her she catches on fire. She has her husband thrown it in the fireplace instead and he burns up in a blaze.

While all this is happening, their son is sinking further and further into a type of psychosis. It is partly his guilt over being the one driving the car when his sister was decapitated and partly whatever evil was released during the seance. Is he possessed? Is it witchcraft? Is the mom insane or possessed? None of this becomes obvious until the last twenty minutes which make the waiting well worth it. Creepy and dark, Hereditary is a really great movie with a unique and interesting take on the typical witch/possession story. Don't listen to the internet, this one is one that will be remembered.