I heard an awful lot about Hereditary until I watched it earlier this year, most of it being praise for how the film was the scariest thing people had seen in years. So understandably I had my expectations high for Hereditary, particularly after I watched director Ari Aster’s follow up Midsommar which I really enjoyed. But then I watched Hereditary and found myself distinctly not scared by what I was watching…so I went away disappointed and mostly confused. But now I’ve returned to it having seen it being considered as the fourth scariest film of all time according to science (study conducted by BroadbandChoices) and decided I would give it another try.
Annie Graham (Toni Collette) is a miniature model maker and is currently dealing with the passing of her estranged mother. Her son Peter (Alex Wolff) never really knew his grandmother; and her daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) appears somewhat disturbed by her grandmother’s passing, but mostly because of the way her grandmother treated her whilst she was alive, often wishing she was a boy. Following the funeral, a series of strange events begin to happen to the members of the Graham family and Annie’s husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is informed that the grandmothers grave has been defaced and the body stolen.
That’s about all I can really say without ruining the surprises Hereditary has in store for viewers, but it is not the kind of horror film that many audiences will have been exposed to before. In fact, it manages to toe the line between arthouse and mainstream almost perfectly, so for some audiences they may be wondering where all the jump scares are, but that’s not to say that Hereditary doesn’t have some terrifying moments.
Ari Aster is clearly a man who loves his craft as his approach to sound design, lighting, and framing in Hereditary is superb. You often get these gorgeous wide shots in quite claustrophobic spaces, and during these scenes you’ll often find, if you’re paying attention, horrors lurking in the corners of the screen, or just out of focus in the background. The camera will linger there too and you’ll often be begging for a jump scare to happen just so you can finally release this tension that’s building up inside you because you can see something horrible just outside of a characters view, but they never come making you just so uncomfortably on edge throughout the entire experience. Hereditary is probably better described as distressing than outright scary. You will certainly leave the film shaken, not from having jumped or screamed every few minutes but instead because you were simply unable to for so long.
Annie Graham (Toni Collette) is a miniature model maker and is currently dealing with the passing of her estranged mother. Her son Peter (Alex Wolff) never really knew his grandmother; and her daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) appears somewhat disturbed by her grandmother’s passing, but mostly because of the way her grandmother treated her whilst she was alive, often wishing she was a boy. Following the funeral, a series of strange events begin to happen to the members of the Graham family and Annie’s husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is informed that the grandmothers grave has been defaced and the body stolen.
That’s about all I can really say without ruining the surprises Hereditary has in store for viewers, but it is not the kind of horror film that many audiences will have been exposed to before. In fact, it manages to toe the line between arthouse and mainstream almost perfectly, so for some audiences they may be wondering where all the jump scares are, but that’s not to say that Hereditary doesn’t have some terrifying moments.
Ari Aster is clearly a man who loves his craft as his approach to sound design, lighting, and framing in Hereditary is superb. You often get these gorgeous wide shots in quite claustrophobic spaces, and during these scenes you’ll often find, if you’re paying attention, horrors lurking in the corners of the screen, or just out of focus in the background. The camera will linger there too and you’ll often be begging for a jump scare to happen just so you can finally release this tension that’s building up inside you because you can see something horrible just outside of a characters view, but they never come making you just so uncomfortably on edge throughout the entire experience. Hereditary is probably better described as distressing than outright scary. You will certainly leave the film shaken, not from having jumped or screamed every few minutes but instead because you were simply unable to for so long.
Aster also allows the more horrific elements of Hereditary linger in ways that people well versed in horror films may find peculiar. There’s a scene towards the end of the first act where something truly disastrous happens, which both the audience and the character the camera focuses on are well aware of, but we only catch a glimpse of what has happened when the character is ready to see for themselves. It then takes several more minutes for us to truly see the extent of what happened where the camera then lingers for an uncomfortable amount of time.
This knowing what has happened, but not being able to see it for quite some time is more terrifying that seeing what actually happens, and there’s a lot of this type of thing in Hereditary.
All of the performances in this film are fantastic but I feel like Toni Collette really steals the show. There’s a very fine line between giving your all in a performance and going over the top, particularly in horror, and she sits right on that line throughout the entire film and it’s truly amazing to see. Her character has such a traumatic past that come the end of the first act and the aforementioned terrible event happens she just breaks and is unable to control her emotions any longer. One moment she is completely hysterical, the next she’s having some sort of epiphany, the next she’s seemingly possessed, and the next she’s having a heart to heart with her family. It’s such a broad range of emotions she carries from moment to moment and can flip them at the drop of a hat and it’s truly something spectacular to watch.
I do want to address the ending so I may dip into some spoiler territory here for those who haven’t watched the film. Personally, I hate that the film drops its ambiguity in favour of explicitly giving us an answer for why these strange events are happening. A part of me liked not knowing whether the family’s collective grief was causing them to go insane, or whether there were actually some dark forces at work. The revelation that the grandmother was a member of some satanic cult that wants to resurrect a demon prince that was living inside Charlie is a little out there for me. So, the ending where Charlie is resurrected inside Peter’s body is kind of deflating for me because I fail to believe the story at that point. But the idea that the family have experienced so much grief and trauma that pushes them to breaking point where they are unsure whether they are going crazy or are being haunted by some supernatural presence is pretty great stuff.
Some people may like the cult angle of things, but personally I feel it puts a bum note at the end of an otherwise very enjoyable film because there’s very little signposting to that being the case throughout.
Some people may not like Hereditary because it doesn’t have jump scares. Some people may not like Hereditary because the ending might be a bitter pill to swallow. Some people may not like Hereditary for a whole number of other reasons. But I will say Hereditary is a very well-made film that likes to challenge expectations of the genre, as well as experiment with interesting framing and sound design to keep the viewer scared not out of shock, but out of discomfort. Do I like Hereditary? There are some elements I love and some I loathe, but overall I feel the craftsmanship of the films is something truly special and makes the film worth watching.
Is it the fourth scariest film of all time, personally no. But it’s definitely a horror film that I won’t forget any time soon.
This knowing what has happened, but not being able to see it for quite some time is more terrifying that seeing what actually happens, and there’s a lot of this type of thing in Hereditary.
All of the performances in this film are fantastic but I feel like Toni Collette really steals the show. There’s a very fine line between giving your all in a performance and going over the top, particularly in horror, and she sits right on that line throughout the entire film and it’s truly amazing to see. Her character has such a traumatic past that come the end of the first act and the aforementioned terrible event happens she just breaks and is unable to control her emotions any longer. One moment she is completely hysterical, the next she’s having some sort of epiphany, the next she’s seemingly possessed, and the next she’s having a heart to heart with her family. It’s such a broad range of emotions she carries from moment to moment and can flip them at the drop of a hat and it’s truly something spectacular to watch.
I do want to address the ending so I may dip into some spoiler territory here for those who haven’t watched the film. Personally, I hate that the film drops its ambiguity in favour of explicitly giving us an answer for why these strange events are happening. A part of me liked not knowing whether the family’s collective grief was causing them to go insane, or whether there were actually some dark forces at work. The revelation that the grandmother was a member of some satanic cult that wants to resurrect a demon prince that was living inside Charlie is a little out there for me. So, the ending where Charlie is resurrected inside Peter’s body is kind of deflating for me because I fail to believe the story at that point. But the idea that the family have experienced so much grief and trauma that pushes them to breaking point where they are unsure whether they are going crazy or are being haunted by some supernatural presence is pretty great stuff.
Some people may like the cult angle of things, but personally I feel it puts a bum note at the end of an otherwise very enjoyable film because there’s very little signposting to that being the case throughout.
Some people may not like Hereditary because it doesn’t have jump scares. Some people may not like Hereditary because the ending might be a bitter pill to swallow. Some people may not like Hereditary for a whole number of other reasons. But I will say Hereditary is a very well-made film that likes to challenge expectations of the genre, as well as experiment with interesting framing and sound design to keep the viewer scared not out of shock, but out of discomfort. Do I like Hereditary? There are some elements I love and some I loathe, but overall I feel the craftsmanship of the films is something truly special and makes the film worth watching.
Is it the fourth scariest film of all time, personally no. But it’s definitely a horror film that I won’t forget any time soon.