Hereditary – Movie Review

This movie is an experience. It will also be an experience which will lead you to ask, what the hell did I just saw? In the best way possible.

This is the first full-length movie by director Ari Aster who also wrote the script. In the movie, a family has to deal with the death of the grandmother Ellen, who was a very complicated, secretive and strange woman. She had a very difficult relationship with her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette), while she had a very close relationship with her very odd granddaughter (Milly Shapiro). Annie, also has an older son, Peter (Alex Wolff), and is not so happily married to Steve (Gabriel Byrne).

The family in the movie is highly dysfunctional. They are not close to each other, they constantly lie to each other and apart from the father of the family, no one is emotionally stable. It seems that other than the granddaughter, no one is upset about the death of the grandmother, but we quickly learn that it is not true.

This movie is both is and is not a conventional horror movie. I do not want to mention which movies this movie reminded me, because it will be spoilery, but at some points it didn’t feel the plot is original, and at some points it felt contrived. However, the setting, the pacing, the acting and the techniques used in this movie set it apart. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the movie, and that suspense feeling lasted so long because there were no jump scares. This movie uses clever techniques to scare you, but it’s a deeper more unsettling sort of fear. The camera placement and object placement along with the lightning will make you wonder what is it that you’re actually seeing.

Also, this movie has so many plot twists that I didn’t see coming, probably because the trailer for the movie is so misleading. Yes, it did it before Infinity War, this trailer is cut in a way not only to not reveal the plot of the movie, or the role and the importance of the characters.

The performances in this movie are great. Toni Collette does an amazing job in this movie. Her acting in this movie is just believable and her ability to express such a wide verity of emotions between each scene. Alex Wolff does a great job as well, from acting like a normal teenager, to pretending to act like a normal teenager. Milly Shapiro is excellent is her first cinematic appearance and will probably have a great career in horror movies. Gabriel Byrne doesn’t really have a lot to do in this movie. However, you know that a horror movie is only as good as the characters in the movie, we need to really care about then and we do. The horror story is really the tragedy of the family.

I understand why some people didn’t like this movie. On the one hand, it is so scary and creepy that it is just hard to process it. On the other hand, this movie leaves you with a lot of question despite the closed ending. Just thinking about the concept of Hereditary and what is symbolizes in this movie is mindboggling and so is the question of through who’s eyes are we seeing this movie.

I want to end with a finale warning. Do not search on YouTube the mythology behind this movie because it will creep you out more than the movie itself as it references to real life actions of people.

You should totally see this movie and take the trailer with a grain of salt and just enjoy a really well-made horror movie that will leave you horrified.

I give it a 8.5/10

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