"Hereditary" is an Unsettling, Masterful Film - One of 2018's Best So Far

   
    The summer movie season is here and I could not be more excited! This weekend marks the opening of three new films, one of which I was able to check out last night. I decided to go scare myself with the highly anticipated Hereditary, a film that has been gaining huge amounts of praise throughout the festival circuit. Being hailed as this generation’s The Exorcist, Hereditary aims to capture that cult following of horror lovers, and let me just say right off the bat that this movie…this movie shook me to my core. A little behind-the-scenes moment here: I live a few blocks down from my local theater, a smaller 12 screen cinema right in the heart of downtown. It takes me about five minutes to walk there from my apartment. Now, I consider myself a fairly macho guy, despite the calm, cool, and collected nature I tend to portray. I walked to the theater last night to catch the 7:00pm showing. I watched the movie, tried desperately to process what exactly I had seen once the credits started to roll, and then suddenly realized I had to walk home. By myself. In the dark. So, I FaceTimed my baby sister - a patron of scary movies herself - and she gleefully chatted me home. Don’t judge.

     Hereditary is the feature film debut of writer/director Ari Aster, and if this film is any inclination of what we can expect from him in the future, then we are truly blessed. The movie tells the story of the Graham family, a family that seems to be plagued by tragedy.  When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away at the beginning of the movie, her daughter Annie (Toni Collette) begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about her family’s ancestry. What really makes this movie interesting is that it feels more like a tense family drama with scary stuff that happens, rather than your typically run-of-the-mill horror movie. It’s a slow-burn, with rising tension that creeps up on you until all hell breaks loose in the third act. This movie caught me off guard, so much so that I had to really decompress during the credits in order to wrap my head around what exactly I just saw. One of the better films to have come out this year for sure, and for horror fans this movie will not disappoint.

     Every aspect of this film is top notch. What stands out the most is the production and the acting. Aster is not afraid of using the long take, letting the frame sit and stew while you are sitting there trying desperately to investigate every inch of the frame for what might pop out and scare you. That’s where some of the brilliance of this movie rests. Aster completely subverts expectations. When you think something is going to happen, nothing does. Yet, he uses that built-up tension to fuel some of the more unsettling moments. There are times when you think you see something, something hidden in the corner of the frame, and Aster will let the camera sit there just long enough for you to question the reality of what you are seeing. It’s like he knows exactly how to mess with your head. Couple that with the grounded, almost completely believable and relatable story around the Grahams, and you’ve got yourself a freaky good time. The way Aster uses setting, camera angles, movement, silence, and unsettling imagery is nothing short of masterful. I was either on the edge of my seat or completely tense throughout. Most conventional horror films will focus on the shock value rather than a good story or character development. Even within the masterful Conjuring films (arguable two of the best horror films to have come out in the last few decades, in my opinion), there are still those jump-scare moments that play in tandem with the emotional stakes of the narrative. Hereditary does not do this. I’ve used the term “unsettling” multiple times in this paragraph, and for good reason. If ever there was a word to perfectly encapsulate the experience of this film that would be it.

   
    The acting is the other aspect of this movie that really knocks it out of the park. The cast as a whole gives really remarkable performances, but the standouts for me were Toni Collette—who plays Annie, the central role in the film—and young Milly Shapiro, who makes her big screen acting debut in this film playing Charlie, Annie’s daughter. Charlie is an interesting character in the movie, and a pivotal piece within the narrative. Shapiro does a phenomenal job in what is really an emotionally-driven character. Charlie has very little dialogue, and Shapiro manages to deliver a riveting performance based on emoting. It’s really fascinating. Charlie is equal parts creepy and sweet, and Shapiro manages to walk that line beautifully. As for Toni Collette, the woman deserves and Oscar nom for this performance. Probably one of the best performances I’ve seen from her, Collette carries a lot of the weight in this film, and really goes to some dark places. Annie is a troubled woman, with an ancestry that is equally troubling and mysterious. As she discovers more and more of what that ancestry entails, she becomes more frazzled, and Collette absolutely delivers.

     There is a supernatural aspect to the movie, and I won’t go too much into it here in this review in order to maintain a sense of curiosity and wonder on your part. When it comes to the supernatural, I will say that there are certain aspects of what would be considered "supernatural content" in general that becomes a bit too much for me to handle as a viewer. The Witch nearly broke me with what they did in that movie, and I remember distinctly leaving the theater feeling uneasy, spooked, and completely flustered. If you’ve seen The Witch, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Hereditary follows a similar path, though not as resonant in its delivery of the final revelation as The Witch was. I know this all seems cryptic, but the point that I’m hopefully making is that the supernatural element in Hereditary works extremely well within this narrative, heightening the unsettling nature of the story, while not being too overt or extremely over the top. Some horror fans will enjoy it, some will hate it, and some probably won’t even think it’s scary. I thought it was quite freaky, and the fact that I can’t get this movie out of my head only goes to support the fact that it succeeds as a vehicle of entertaining horror. Long story short, I highly recommend this movie.