By: JWBM
Us humans are strange creatures: what we do, or choose not to do for love; how we bond, how we disconnect; how we deal with loss, how we don't deal at all. This is a film that takes on these aspects—while not making an attempt to resolve them—but to instead explore their darkest crevices in order to remind you sad and evil concepts exist in ordinary places.
There are so many themes going on with "Hereditary" that it's really a puzzle to unlock or keep track of all of them. Some of them fit smoothly in place—such as death of family members, or what happens to someone's spirit—while others are over-the-top to intentionally jar your senses—such as giving perspective through miniature sets. It's one of those tales where just about every negative aspect of family life, mental health, and even general social cues are thrown at you. If you were feeling down beforehand, it may not be a great idea to toss this on. It's a nightmare waiting to explode and selfishly take you with it.
Loss and more loss; coupled with resentment of a family hanging on the balance of mere threads. It's like watching "Ordinary People" that crossed the line into something like "It Follows" with an equally methodical and atmosphere drenched experience. It's one of those films where it would be your undoing to put your guard down. There are constant sound effects that remind the viewer of mounting, unresolved tensions in the air, or that secretive things are to come. They can range from fitting the mood, to annoyingly hypnotic and going against the scene. The experience is one unsettling set up after the next. The atmosphere is a combination of the strange, mysterious, and uncomfortable. The pacing is frequently reduced to a crawl; it oozes and seeps into cracks of your senses, lingering, unable to shake it off. It's patient, but unlike a good friend, it's punishing when you catch up.
The perspective takes turns pivoting between family members, with the father mostly keeping it together, though with the mother, Annie, frequently pulling it apart. She's on edge and mentally anguished to begin with, combined with being emotionally distraught over the recent events. Rarely is she not anxiety riddled and on the verge of a breakdown from one stress after the next. It gives a certain dramatic and psychological element to the film if its subject matter wasn't enough. Toni Collette goes all out as Annie, to where every ounce of her brain chemistry and body language is thrown into the role. It's far from playing it safe or not going there. She's already there and then some. No one would second guess what she's going through.
This wasn't a perfect experience through and through. Though for a number of reasons it was a memorable experience: unique, suspenseful, atmospheric, and full of creative ways to terrorize. There are some truly disturbing scenes that make the skin crawl, rather than your typical horror with lazy pop and scare antics. Its pacing can both help and hurt the film. At a few points in the beginning, while they gave some odd cues, and stacked on the misery, they lost me for greater reasoning or having a stable backbone than a formless shape; I was led somewhere, but my interest started to float and come off the tracks. Though once a few more pieces got introduced, it started to ground itself and come together. That might have been the director's balance between being overly careful, but at the same time ambitious for his first full length feature. It's as if he over-planned, rather than under like most other features. For better or worse, he still gets the brain to search, tempting you to dissect the layers and hidden messages.
Dim the lights, break out the candles, and make sure you have enough time to process with your support group before going to sleep—if you have one, or can that is.
Rating: 7.5/10
Director: Ari Aster
Actors: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: Youtube link
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