[yasr_overall_rating]
When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.
From the outset, Ari Aster’s directorial debut “Hereditary” announces itself as an incredibly dense and intricate horror film, one which doesn’t allow for even the chance of a safety net, from beginning to end; if you think you’ve seen something out of the corner of your eye in “Hereditary,” it will most definitely manifest itself later, to a deeply unsettling extent.
The film’s success stems from the way its horror is rooted in reality, in the inevitable experiences one may have, from coming to terms with a history of family illness to the acceptance of motherhood to coping with the death of a loved one. Appropriately so, “Hereditary” begins with the funeral of a mysterious family matriarch, Ellen, mother of Annie (Toni Collette), and grandmother to the older, typically teenaged brother Peter, and younger, possibly more sinister sister Charlie (played by Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro respectively, two of the greatest juvenile performances of 2018). The funeral leaves some of the family feeling indifferent, particularly Annie’s husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and Peter, considering Ellen’s domineering presence within the household. The death, however, causes more existential dread within Annie, confused on why she isn’t feeling sadder, and Charlie, who was Ellen’s undeniable favorite, to the point of Ellen insisting on breastfeeding instead of Annie. This complex range of emotions across the family only grows more destructive during the slow discovery of Ellen being a practitioner of a satanic brand of the occult.
In short, a curse has been placed on the family, one that courses through the family’s large, Northwestern (and incredibly isolated) house, guaranteeing no one can hide. Annie chronicles her life in miniature, through impressively detailed model tableaus, and a sense of uneasiness begins to swell as the film’s darkness begins to permeate every corner, with the same kind of attention Annie pays to her own work (not even twenty minutes in does Charlie decapitate a pigeon of means of building herself a new doll). The intensity of how the family deals with grief would render this a rather potent chamber drama, but Aster takes it another step further, combining the familial aspects of David Cronenberg’s “The Brood” and William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” affirming “Hereditary”’s own place within the horror movie canon.
To chronicle the events of “Hereditary” would be to dispel its masterful command of suspense, as its premise is more the end result of the film, rather than a jumping off point. In fact, Aster introduces what seems to be the film’s main narrative thread, only to pull out the rug from under us in one of the film’s most violently upsetting moments; no safety net indeed. The film’s premise is conceptually sound, yet without becoming too expository or obvious, maintaining its chokehold throughout (also possessing a harshly immersive digital glow, not unlike David Lynch’s recent work with “Twin Peaks”). The terror remains so subtly ingrained within moments where a suspension of disbelief would seem appropriate, in unspoken desires and nightmares. A confession that Annie makes to Peter near the film’s middle is just as terrifying as a ghost or demon from a lesser film, so much so that the film’s final half hour of unfettered horror makes the preceding 90 minutes seem impossibly restrained. By so thoroughly working the family’s personal demons within the fabric of the film’s approach to the occult, Aster has created a kind of emotional investment that renders the horror more deeply disturbing, and even heartbreaking, than gratuitous.
Claims of “Hereditary” being this generation’s “The Exorcist” are not far off. Friedkin created a new kind of all-encompassing terror by penetrating preconceived notions of faith; in the world of “The Exorcist,” you couldn’t even turn to god. “Hereditary” takes this to a new extreme, where the concerns are more earthbound, dismantling the assumed to be reassuring fallbacks of family. “Hereditary”’s horror is a devastating one, a family drama recast in an unprecedented nightmare.
In theaters Friday, June 8th
