Movie Review: Hereditary

It'll haunt you to your core

Hereditary (2018): When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter's family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.

Wow. What a film. So before I even start talking about Hereditary, do yourself a favor: if you have even passing interest in horror, drop everything and go see it right now. This film is EASILY the best horror film since 2015's classic It Follows, with the same levels of fear and terror attached to it all while being significantly more daring and creative in its storytelling. It Follows made its scares on the viewer being able to see the monster methodically and deliberately walking towards its main characters, while Hereditary does basically the exact opposite.  Rather, Hereditary takes a The Blair Witch Project-esque route and has its supernatural being be implied and, for the most part, off-screen. This is a significantly harder kind of scary to pull off, (the big pop scare from It Follows is still etched into my very soul) but first time director/writer Ari Aster (OSCAR! Is this seriously his first film? Well done, A24) delivers the kind of "haunt you to your bones" kind of scary that many horror fans, including yours truly, have been yearning for. So, I'll say again: if you have even a mild interest in the genre, go see it now, and deal with the consequences later. I mean, it's worth it, right?

So let's talk about Toni Collette. The veteran actress is erratic and irrational as lead character Annie Graham. She goes all-in for this role and delivers an unforgettable performance that is as meticulous as it is insane. This is by far the best performance I've seen in 2018 so far, and probably the best performance I've seen in a horror movie from a veteran actor, ever. The recognizability of the Oscar nominated actress brings with it a certain level of expectations for the role, but the raw audacity of her performance blows all those expectations out of the water. The looks on Annie Graham's face at several points in this film is etched into my very soul, and we all have Toni Collette to thank for that. (If you've seen the film, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about too.) Newcommer Milly Shapiro (another great find for A24) is haunting as daughter Charlie, (kudos to the makeup team on this one too) and Alex Wolff delivers the performance of his young career (previously seen in the massively underrated My Friend Dahmer) as son Peter. But the real hero here is first time feature director/writer Ari Aster. (Which is still impossible to comprehend for me, Oscar. I don't believe you.)

Seriously - look at the complexity of that face!

The craft here is simply masterful to watch, and the story is as daring as it is creative. This story has proved to be decisive among audiences - the film currently boasts a D+ on CinemaScore, somehow - but I believe the truly great works of cinema often are divisive when they're immediately released. (Let's not forget The Blair Witch Project, now considered a pioneer in the horror genre, was criticized upon release as well.) The scares here are not the mainstream "in-your-face pop scare!" kind. There's very little "slow pan right where a demonic creature is standing, then disappears to build tension" kind of cheap shots. You actually hardly ever see the monster, so for those of you that are skittish at the idea of jump scares, you can rest easy (somewhat) knowing that there are very few of them here. (I wrote a piece on the current norms of the horror industry centering around Unfriended - which is now getting a sequel, proving my point further - which Hereditary does everything it can to break.) No, the scares here are the thoughtful, resonating kind. The kind that keeps you up at night looking at the ceiling in a restless trance rather than staring at the door. The ones that you affiliate directly with the movie, versus just creating some demonic presence in your mind that is whatever you want it to be. These, are the best kinds of scary.

The story here is brilliant, but not necessarily designed for mainstream audiences. There were people laughing towards the end at some points in my screening, and the people sitting next to me couldn't help but comment about how much they hated the thing when it was all said and done. (Hence that D+ CinemaScore) My only complaint about it (and really about the film in general) is the fact that Ari Aster felt the need to overexplain things a few times. (I'm guessing this was a mandate from A24 when they realized they had one of the best films they've ever released on their hands and wanted to market the crap out of it to as mainstream an audience as they could.) There are a few cumbersome voiceovers that are basically just describing what you're seeing at that moment that were distracting and unnecessary, and of course we had to get the stereotypical "Character A finds a book and reads aloud the thing that's going on for the audience to understand" sequence. Also, the film has a lot of technology in it, and it's unfortunate that given how innovative this film is in other aspects that Aster didn't do much from an editing standpoint to show the technology to the audience in a creative way, but that's a rather trivial complaint. This film is absolutely brilliant - the best I've seen so far this year - and if you have even a minor soft spot for horror it's well worth the watch as.....yes. This is the best horror film I've seen in at least a decade. Move over, It Follows.

The Critique: Lead by a brilliant performance from Toni Collette, Hereditary is the best film of 2018 so far and the best horror film of the decade with its unorthodox "haunt you in your bones" style.

The Recommendation: An absolute must-see for horror fans if you haven't seen it already.

Rewatchability: High

​The Verdict: 9.5/10 Damn Near Perfect



Image Credit
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