Genre: Horror/ Drama
Runtime: 126 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Milly Shapiro, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd
Description: A grieving family is a hunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.
Review: The horror films that get under your skin are the once that provide you with a story where the drama is just as important as the shock effects, scares and gore. Look at “The Exorcist” or more recent “The Conjuring” “Get Out” or “It Follows’. The drama surrounding these stories make the characters more vulnerable and the story eventually more disturbing and scary.
“Hereditary” is the directorial debut by Ari Aster and is carried by the unprecedented Toni Collette. The film has the so-called slow burn, where Aster takes his time to build the story and its characters. And with that you can conclude that the first hour goes by, being gripping and filled with tension, without even one jump scare. Then you’re a great horror director.
You know something is wrong. Aster plays with the empathy and sentiment of the viewer and he also plays with their expectations of the horror genre. A dead grandmother, a big old house, an eccentric child. Lots of clichés, but Aster has other plans with them than you would expect. Mother of the family, Annie, decides to join a support group to deal with her dead mother. Or actually the fact that she feels relieved and she feels guilty about it. Because her mother wasn’t really someone she bonded with. Annie also has a daughter, Charlie, who seems to have autistic tendencies and had a special connection with her grandmother. Charlie starts seeing things after her death.
Aster changes paths when Charlie is taken to a party alongside her older brother Peter. That’s when you realize that every plot element and each character trade has been chosen carefully. Not only visually does Ari Aster proof he is one to watch, but his screenplay is extraordinary. Everything works, everything is right. Annie’s husband Steve is hard to communicate with, so she does it through her self-made miniatures. And this vague relationship Annie has with her husband, makes for her to go deeper into isolation. And her connection with son Peter is also not healthy. However, the most important trump of “Hereditary” is the ominous atmosphere. The film isn’t about effects or jump scares, but nestles in the human mind and gets under your skin.
Toni Collette is extremely good in “Hereditary”. It’s the best performance I have seen in a horror movie for quite some time. Her portrayal of a woman who is going through several stages of grief and eventually becomes entangles in a web of fear, disbelief and misunderstanding. The last twenty minutes of the film might not please everyone, but I think this film is perfect. “Hereditary” does what a good horror movie has to do: it scares, gets under your skin and will haunt you for a while. I think it’s an instant classic.
Rating: 5 / 5
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