Hereditary review

HEREDITARY:

AN UNSETTLING AND EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE THAT’S DESTINED TO BE A NEW HORROR CLASSIC!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: **** out of 4

A24

Every family tree hides a secret in Hereditary

            Once in a while there comes a horror movie that abandons all genre tropes from jump scares, stock characters, and gore and instead takes a familiar concept, tweak it in all the right places, and delivers an atmospheric, character focused, and consistently frightening experience. Hereditary is one of those movies, directed by Ari Aster (The Strange Things About the Johnsons) and starring Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, Little Miss Sunshine), this is a brilliant take on the classic haunted house/family with a secret style of horror that probably won’t make you scream but will most likely leave you breathless.

            Hereditary isn’t filled with annoying jump scares or an overreliance on gore, but rather an eerie and unsettling tone set all throughout the movie and disturbing subject matter, complex characters, and it keeps you on your toes. Add on some beautiful cinematography and a powerhouse performance by Collette, and you got a movie destined to be a new horror classic.

            The film follows miniaturist artist, Annie Graham (Collette) who lives with her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne-The Usual Suspects, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)), their teenage son, Peter (Alex Wolff-From Up on Poppy Hill, Patriots Day, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), and 13-year-old daughter, Charlie (Newcomer, Milly Shapiro). When Annie’s mother, Ellen passes away, the family begins to unravel cryptic yet increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.

            The deeper they dig into the secrets, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they have inherited. It also doesn’t help that their mother might be going insane as heritage goes to hell.

            The film also stars Ann Dowd (Philadelphia, St. Vincent, Captain Fantastic) as Joan.

            Overall, Hereditary is an unforgettable and spine-tingling experience as well as a phenomenal directorial debut for Ari Aster. From the story, production design, and execution, you can tell Aster knows how to make a scary movie and still have the audience connect with the characters.

            As mentioned before, Hereditary doesn’t rely on jump scares or gory slasher deaths to scare the audience but rather a psychological and suspenseful approach with supernatural themes and atmosphere. It’s kind of in the same vain as The Witch, coincidentally another horror movie released by A24, where it relies on old-fashioned scares and creepy situations with fully fleshed-out characters and a lot of the scares come from what you don’t see instead of what you do.

            Fear is subjective and it’s going to be different with everyone, I personally don’t see myself having constant sleepless nights after watching this movie, but it deals with a very relatable theme, family drama. The death of a loved one, a disturbed child, a teenage son who has witnessed something horrible and tragic, and a mother who has a long, complicated family history, all of these are represented in Hereditary and they’re done tremendously well.

             Aside from seeing the trailer a couple times in theaters and briefly skimming some reviews, I pretty much came into the movie completely blind and it took me by surprise. I had no idea where it was going and was invested in the story and characters until the movie ended, the family history is so complex, unsettling, and interesting that all throughout the movie I was mentally saying “Oh my God, where is this movie going?”, my eyes were glued to the screen, my jaw hung open for a good chunk of the film, and I was out of breath when the credits rolled.

            At least for me, this is a horror movie that succeeds where a lot of modern scary flicks fail, being scary and interesting. I got the trailers for The First Purge and Searching before this movie and not much of a reaction out of me regarding those films, the new Purge movie just looks like all the other Purge movies and Searching looks like an Unfriended clone (But who knows? It might be good), from the moment Hereditary started to the end credits I was gasping, shaking in my seat, and occasionally laughing, but most important of all I was emotionally invested all the way through and never bored.

             The acting is really solid and especially from Toni Collette and I’m going on record by saying this might be the best performance I’ve ever seen of hers. She owns every moment and you’re not sure what to make of her, is she going crazy or something else entirely, not to mention you feel the struggle that she’s going through with the loss of a loved one and how hard it can be to let go.

            Hereditary has all the things I look for in a great scary movie, a clever story, engaging characters, creative scares, and unexpected twists and surprises. Not often do I get horror movies that hit all of these notes, but this year I got two, A Quiet Place and now this, I highly recommend Hereditary to anyone looking for chills and thrills in all the right ways, just don’t watch it alone.