Hereditary (Ari Aster)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7784604/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film))

https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hereditary-poster.jpg

[Henry Gale]

Well ain't this some fucking insanity done most deliciously?

It's a lot to wrap my head around, and it's such a pervasively atmospheric and intimidatingly emotional experience in the moment that I feel like it may take me a whole other viewing (however soon I may be up to putting myself through it all again) to really know what to make of it even just in terms of how its plot mechanics all fit together in my mind, or if certain things I saw are truly what they were. And then maybe I'll start put together what it all means on another level beyond that face value.

The main things to know:

- For a feature debut, it's fairly phenomenal. It's just so deeply wild in its elements and yet so perfectly controlled on a visual and tonal level (even when it's willingly all over the place and giving no normal sense of what it wants you to feel), and for every influence you may be able to track to it, there's such an original fusion to it, particularly with the dramatic story its horror cohabitates with that it always comes out ahead for pushing things forward, or to more uneasy extremes, both in terms of what the story calls for and what cinema usually provides comfort in you being able to let your knowledge guide you through convention.

- Toni Collette, as great as she has always tended to be, is especially astonishing here, and rarely in the same way from scene to scene. It's not only an amazing showcase of her talents, but a display of things I'm not sure many films have ever really asked for an actor to play with quite this sort of concoction. She can be as tangibly real or as beautifully heightened as the film calls for, and she's game and on point for all of it.

- The fact that it seems A24 is putting everything into getting this film out there in as many theatres in the middle of a summer season that seems hungry for another unexpectedly major horror event after A Quiet Place is an incredible choice that, now knowing this is the film they have to unleash, is as awesomely sadistic as it is courageous. If 2015 had It Follows, 2016 had The Witch, and 2017 had mother!, this is its natural succession of zeitgeist, style and gall in the genre. It will be undoubtedly be the weirdest hit film of the year if it is successful, but it could also make just as much sense if it stops making money the second mainstream audiences catch a glance at it. And for that, I am excited.

There was a brief intro before we viewed the movie, and moderator George Stroumboulopoulos (who had obviously already seen the movie) asked the Ari Aster if there was anything he wanted to say anything to us as the audience to help prepare us for what we were about to see. And all Aster did was smile in such a laid-back, gleeful way and say "Oh, no I want them to be vulnerable." And with that, even if everyone then shielded themselves even more, there was no way we could've really imagined that he would've made a film that actually went so above and beyond to deliver a film worthy of such a hopeless warning, and deliver in the many ways in does. Because very few films do.

[Spinal]

Just stopped by to read the first sentence. That was enough. Looking forward to reading the rest of your post after I see the movie.

[Stay Puft]

God damn you, Henry. I missed out on this screening and also got shut out of that Fahrenheit 451 screening the other week.

I'm mad jelly.

[Henry Gale]

God damn you, Henry. I missed out on this screening and also got shut out of that Fahrenheit 451 screening the other week.

I'm mad jelly.

Ah wow, that is a bummer. I wish to pass on the luck I've had with both of these screenings your way, because both have definitely had their own forms of complete chance attached for me.

[Ivan Drago]

Not only do I see this next week, but I also get to write a review of it for the website I write for. I'm beyond excited. :)

[Henry Gale]

Not only do I see this next week, but I also get to write a review of it for the website I write for. I'm beyond excited. :)

Nice, I look forward to reading it! I'm not sure if you're allowed to post anything here before your review, but I feel like something like this calls for looser, rawer thoughts to be expressed at some point, so obviously feel free to share those here, even if not right away.

The more I collect my thoughts on this, the more I realize that this feels like the sort of movie I truly would expect a lot of people to hate, and ignite just as intense adoration from people like me on the other side of things, for likely a lot of the same elements and moments, and be a very understandable "love it or hate it" sort of movie that has its own cult following and then everyone else moves on. But apparently, at least with critics, it seems like most are making this decidedly not polarizing whatsoever? (So far anyway, since such a high benchmark of consensus can only set expectations higher for people.)

Again, if A24 manages to get this into over 2,000 theatres then holy shit will I be grinning like an idiot (and maybe even pay good money to sit in the most full general audience showing I can to just experience people.. react), because it is such a rare sort of beautifully obtuse, esoteric and incendiary concoction.

[Pop Trash]

Fun fact: I'm friends with Ari Aster and I've known him since he was a teenager. I haven't seen him since he moved to Los Angeles from New Mexico for AFI about a decade ago, but I'm really happy about his success with this. Last time I saw him we (and another mutual friend) all went to see Danny Boyle's Sunshine together.

[Henry Gale]

Fun fact: I'm friends with Ari Aster and I've known him since he was a teenager. I haven't seen him since he moved to Los Angeles from New Mexico for AFI about a decade ago, but I'm really happy about his success with this. Last time I saw him we (and another mutual friend) all went to see Danny Boyle's Sunshine together.

Ah very cool. His Q&A for this was really insightful, but also just funny in terms of how laid-back, gentle and humourous he is, especially considering the tone of the room set by his movie right before. And meeting him after the movie and I found him to be a very sweet and gracious guy. He seemed genuinely touched when I said how fantastic a time I had with it.

[Pop Trash]

Ah very cool. His Q&A for this was really insightful, but also just funny in terms of how laid-back, gentle and humourous he is, especially considering the tone of the room set by his movie right before. And meeting him after the movie and I found him to be a very sweet and gracious guy. He seemed genuinely touched when I said how fantastic a time I had with it.

Yeah, he's a nice guy, but very opinionated about cinema (as am I, duh). His taste is also much darker than mine. I'm way more into comedies from the 70s - 90s. His favorite directors are Bergman, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Mizoguchi, Scorsese, Mike Leigh, Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke, and Polanski (among others).

I honestly bet he's having trepidations about being ghettoized as a "horror director" since, unless his taste has changed a lot in the decade since I've seen him, he likes dark dramas just as much (if not more so) than horror, and most of the horror he likes is artsy Euro horror type stuff (think Don't Look Now or The Tenant). I just listened to a podcast interview with him and he said he had the cast and crew not watch horror movies, but instead had them watch Autumn Sonata, The Ice Storm, and In the Bedroom to prepare them for the style of film he wanted to make.

[Henry Gale]

Yeah, he's a nice guy, but very opinionated about cinema (as am I, duh). His taste is also much darker than mine. I'm way more into comedies from the 70s - 90s. His favorite directors are Bergman, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Mizoguchi, Scorsese, Mike Leigh, Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke, and Polanski (among others).

I honestly bet he's having trepidations about being ghettoized as a "horror director" since, unless his taste has changed a lot in the decade since I've seen him, he likes dark dramas just as much (if not more so) than horror, and most of the horror he likes is artsy Euro horror type stuff (think Don't Look Now or The Tenant). I just listened to a podcast interview with him and he said he had the cast and crew not watch horror movies, but instead had them watch Autumn Sonata, The Ice Storm, and In the Bedroom to prepare them for the style of film he wanted to make.

Yeah this rings really true to both how he spoke about the movie, but luckily (and more importantly) how the movie feels itself. Some of its bleakest and hard-to-shake elements don't feel as if they're genre-specific stuff at all. Colin Stetson's score is deeply unnerving and sinister to have you feel uneasy from the get-go, but you could probably tell someone who hated horror movies and knew nothing about this that they were seeing a really depressing drama, and I'm sure for a good bit of the first act they would still probably believe you that it wasn't anything else.

He also mentioned that A24 is already fully financing his next movie, which I later read came after he turned down many bigger, more standard studio offers, which leads me to believe, regardless of what genre the next project might be, it's truly what he wants to do next.

[Pop Trash]

He also mentioned that A24 is already fully financing his next movie, which I later read came after he turned down many bigger, more standard studio offers, which leads me to believe, regardless of what genre the next project might be, it's truly what he wants to do next.

That sounds like Ari. He really doesn't like studio films (or at least he didn't when I knew him) so I seriously doubt he's going to sell out and do a Marvel movie or a Jurassic World or whatever, even if they throw a ton of money at him (then again, who knows). He used to help curate a movie club in Los Angeles, sort of like a more underground version of cinefamily (before sex harassment junk shut cinefamily down) which mostly focused on off-the-radar foreign films, but also lesser seen indie movies like Lonergan's Margaret. I think they played Incendies too, before Villeneuve was making big Hollywood movies.

[Pop Trash]

The ending might be a little *too* Rosemary's Baby, and I know the original cut was three hours long, so there seems to be sleight of hand omissions which may or may not be better for the film. By that I mean that it unfolds a bit like a puzzle with a few pieces missing here and there, but that off-kilter sense of confusion only adds to the palpable terror.

Ari Aster does an excellent job of walking a tightrope between a kitchen sink drama where constant (and sometimes horrendously violent) death is always lurking, causing mental fatigue and sudden outbursts of cruelty, and true blue supernatural horror (in this case witchcraft) that only adds to the meltdown of the family unit.

I think the point is that if life itself can cause so much grief and tragedy, does it really matter if witchcraft and possession pile-on even more psychic warfare and agony?

The devil is in the details and here we have an unnerving score, deeply dark cinematography (I'm guessing this was shot digital with extremely fast lenses, I'm not sure if film can capture how dark this often is), choice sound effects, and a paint peeling performance by Toni Collette as a woman under the influence of, well, see for yourself.

[Ivan Drago]

Voila. (https://615film.com/2018/06/08/review-hereditary-takes-the-horror-genre-to-unsettling-heights/)

[Spinal]

I loved that this movie didn't feel American. It's like when you watch a good European or Japanese horror movie and you think, why can't American films be like that? This one was.

[MadMan]

I like a good summer horror release. I will check this out.

[Ezee E]

I can definitely say I had no idea what direction this movie would take after the 30-45 minute mark. From there on, it's some of the best horror I've seen in years. Well done. Toni Collette is so good here too that I hope she gets some type of recognition.

[TGM]

Dude sitting beside me in the theater was just about shitting himself throughout this. Meanwhile, I was mostly bored.

I had concerns when I saw the runtime was over 2 hours. And just like last year's IT, it ran just about a half hour entirely too long.

This was really lame. Tried waaaaaaaaaayy too fucking hard. :\

[transmogrifier]

This is excellent. It has such a masterful sense of pacing and atmosphere that you can forgive the fact that it is just another psycho cult thing, which I usually don't really have much interest in (see also, The Witch, Kill List etc), and that it gets a little silly here and there (a couple of reaction shots, jumping out the window, nakedness etc.).

But it works better if you ignore all the culty stuff and pretend it is just about succumbing to schizophrenia combined with the dissolution of a family after unspeakable tragedy.

[Ezee E]

Trans and I are eye to eye here.

[Spinal]

I wonder how the ending would play if you removed Ann Dowd's voiceover.

[Ezee E]

It's resonating well. Although I'm beginning to wonder if the cult-stuff was written in on a second or third draft. Just seems like it's psychological until it'd be too mean to make the mother that obviously crazy.

[TGM]

I wonder how the ending would play if you removed Ann Dowd's voiceover.

Probably would've been an improvement.


It's resonating well. Although I'm beginning to wonder if the cult-stuff was written in on a second or third draft. Just seems like it's psychological until it'd be too mean to make the mother that obviously crazy.

It was once this stuff started coming into play that the movie started to lose me. Just juggling way too much between all the different horror stuff, to the point that it's just clunky.

[Mal]

There's too much shit going on.
It's the greatest hits album for the horror genre-
Family shit. Sleepwalking. Grief. Satan. Disabilities. Visions. Animal harm. Seances. Mini houses. Mental illness. Its just too much - and since I'm never given a reason to care about this family, whats the fucking point? I never believed that Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne were a married couple. This reeks of amateur hour, throwing everything at the audiences and hoping it all sticks in a script that feels like a rough draft- for goodness sake, you could edit this and make a decent 85 minute picture but clearly they didn't have that intent. Props to A24 on making the budget back through their marketing campaign and wide release, but this doesn't work for me because I've seen it all before and in better stuff.

[Pop Trash]

There's too much shit going on.


See, I kinda like that. It reminds me a bit of the original Phantasm in that regard. Phantasm is another movie that starts with death and a funeral, and goes apeshit from there with all kinds of stoner logic cray cray.

[Spinal]

I just heard Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" for the first time since seeing this movie and had this immediate emotional reaction. It was startling.

[Peng]

I feel like there must be a perfect middle ground somewhere between The Babadook's drama/horror complete overlap and Hereditary's drama/horror undermining distance. The former has the drama thematically explain the horror too much for the spooky stuff to be truly effective. Meanwhile, Hereditary's dramatic function is to prime its characters and audience emotionally for the horror to come, but feels otherwise both mostly divorced from the spookiness and slightly underdeveloped, despite being there for more than half the film.

The problem for me may be that both its drama and horror requires a whole fleshed-out ensemble, but only Toni Collette is granted that full insight, so the rest of the family gets short shrift. It's fine with Milly Shapiro because she's used more for symbolic uneasiness, but Alex Wolff, who should be Collette's equal, feels a few character beats away from being complete player, while Gabriel Bynre is almost completely wasted as a family member. It makes his character's strong skepticism at one late point feels intrusive rather than earned, like unnecessary drama undermining the escalating horror, because he barely makes a dent in this family dynmaics at all. Maybe the three-hour first cut that reportedly has its dramatic parts cut down to this version might rectify this?

However, even if the family drama doesn't complement the supernatural well, it's still effective enough during the first half, thanks mostly to Collette's intensity. And its distance has one full advantage over The Babadook's overlap, which is that the horror can wreak havoc on the nerves directly unburdened by rational metaphors. The 'explanation' here comes in little waves for us to just barely comprehend, enough for the proceedings to make some horrible sense, and only arrives fully in the last scene, which doesn't bother me as much as most people because the execution is still plenty creepy. And by that point, the former freaky 20 minutes or so have enough unholy imagery, unbearable drawn-out tension, and background horrors about to be unleashed at any moment to make all my limbs go cold. 8/10

[Dead & Messed Up]

I did not have a strong reaction to this movie. There are well-crafted elements and sequences, and the performance by Toni Collette obviously kicks the film up a level - although I wonder if she could've replaced her franticness with a calmer certainty at certain points ("frazzled" is a more unkind word, but she's frazzled without many breaks for a long stretch of the film). But in the final five minutes, when the film completes its deep dive into the abyss of human venality, my mind was wandering. Why? I'm not sure. I think maybe the issue is that the teenage boy is too dazed to capture enough of my empathy.

Spoilers to better explain and draw parallels: I felt similarly about Sheri Moon Zombie in The Lords of Salem, another movie along these lines. More psychedelic, for sure, but chasing some of the same moods and story beats and falling into the same challenge. The Platonic ideal for this kind of character is Rosemary Woodhouse, who fought up until the final moments and had real perspective and passion for the position she'd been placed in (there's no one here to spit in the face of the cruel people behind the act). Something about these dazed death marches feels a little off to me. Or maybe they're not to my taste.

In general, though, and no disrespect to the individual indie horror films of recent years, but there does seem to be a pattern of thought that classy, slow-burn, shadowy, Kubrickian horror is the best and most elevating style of horror. And some of these films have really transcended and been special (I have much love for The Babadook and think It Follows has stretches of brilliance in a sturdy package). And this film is good and worthy and, again, features a commanding lead performance. And I'm sure there will be plenty of hot takes out there to read on the film's themes and unpacking of family trauma and the different meanings of the title.

I just left the film saying "Huh." Instead of "Wow."

Which isn't bad!

But it's not a wow.

Maybe it will be someday.

[Dukefrukem]

What an incredible visceral experience.

[Dukefrukem]

Fun fact: I'm friends with Ari Aster and I've known him since he was a teenager. I haven't seen him since he moved to Los Angeles from New Mexico for AFI about a decade ago, but I'm really happy about his success with this. Last time I saw him we (and another mutual friend) all went to see Danny Boyle's Sunshine together.

Holy hell! Message him on FB and tell him we love this work.

[Dukefrukem]

The ending might be a little *too* Rosemary's Baby, and I know the original cut was three hours long, so there seems to be sleight of hand omissions which may or may not be better for the film. By that I mean that it unfolds a bit like a puzzle with a few pieces missing here and there, but that off-kilter sense of confusion only adds to the palpable terror..

It's obvious they cut a ton out. The ADRed Jeanie saying 'the whole family needs to be in the "HOUSE"', even though she mouths "ROOM". So I think there was a scene cut out where they were speaking the words all in the same room and changed it to house. I'd imagine there was a lot more going on from that point on.

This DOES ring Rosemary's Baby, as does the Shining. The confusion works.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I didn't realize Ari Aster was the demented boy behind this sexy slice of domestic tragedy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqyQMX4rwHs

[Pop Trash]

I didn't realize Ari Aster was the demented boy behind this sexy slice of domestic tragedy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqyQMX4rwHs

Yeah, I thought that would wreck his career in Hollywood, honestly. Which is why I was doubly surprised when he was able to make a feature film w/ A24 distribution.

[Dead & Messed Up]

As an auteur, he is fascinated by broken families and the way children threaten to devour their parents.

[strokes chin]

[submits article pitch to Vox.com]

[Scar]

I wonder how the ending would play if you removed Ann Dowd's voiceover.

Those last fifteen seconds pissed me off something fierce. It was like enjoying a thirty five year scotch for two hours and then someone spit rail whiskey in your mouth.

[Irish]

I went in expecting a lot because of the high praise from all quarters but the writing here was absolutely fucking terrible.

The characters are shallow, the beats haphazard, and it's not much of a story. Instead, we get ham-handed exposition and a lot of tired ideas around the occult and a buncha images to match.


This was really lame. Tried waaaaaaaaaayy too fucking hard. :\

^ This this this. Good God.

[Yxklyx]

How come every time I see a movie with Toni Collette I don't realize she's in it until the credits roll?

[StuSmallz]

I finally just watched this, and I definitely didn't like it on the whole. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think it was BAD or anything, just disappointing in comparison to my expectations. There were good aspects, of course; the intense performances, creepy cinematography, and lovingly detailed production design were all quite good on their own, it's just in the overall tone and execution that the film struggles, as we go from a slightly problematic but still relatively promising first half to an endless parade of tiresome Horror cliches (demonic cults, ghostly/demonic possessions, gratuitous nightmare fake-outs, etc.), mostly executed in as tediously an over-the-top manner as possible, one-right-after-another with almost no sense of pacing or restraint, as if Ari Aster hoped that all the vaguely demon-themed crap he was throwing at the wall and us would somehow end up coalescing into a cohesive film (they didn't). Not effective, not scary, but often pretty ridiculous. Like I said, not a bad film, as it IS executed with an undeniable amount of skill in certain aspects, but it is directed with little overall discipline, and Aster's going to need to significantly revamp his style if he wants me to stay interested in his career from this point on.

[transmogrifier]

I pretty much disagree with all of that word for word, point for point.

Still, that's the great thing about movies - there's something for everyone.

[megladon8]

Holy moly, this one shook me up something fierce.

[Pop Trash]

I feel like this is structured a bit like The House of the Devil (Ti West) with a long slow burn w/ tasty formal camerawork with the last 30 minutes unleashing the horror elements in quick succession.

[Grouchy]

I give it a very reluctant Nay. The film is jaw-dropping for the first half when it's not completely clear where it's going. Then it seems to rebel against its previous uniqueness and goes straight into overly familiar genre tropes for the last half. I agree there's something wrong with the pacing that makes the film seem more a compilation of creepy/dramatic scenes than a narrative.

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to the next Aster joint. And how about that Toni Colette performance? Wild stuff.

[StuSmallz]

I give it a very reluctant Nay. The film is jaw-dropping for the first half when it's not completely clear where it's going. Then it seems to rebel against its previous uniqueness and goes straight into overly familiar genre tropes for the last half. I agree there's something wrong with the pacing that makes the film seem more a compilation of creepy/dramatic scenes than a narrative.

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to the next Aster joint. And how about that Toni Colette performance? Wild stuff.Well, while I've already been up-front with my overall disappointment with the film here, I do agree Collette's performance alone was quite praise-worthy, as she was absolutely convincing as a hysterical woman cracking under various stresses, demonic and otherwise, and she was undeniably effective in it... up to a point. You see, something like the scene at about the half-hour mark after you-know-what-happened, and she's on the floor absolutely screaming her heart out is not only completely believable on the part of her acting, but also utterly appropriate and effective at that point in the film, considering what had just happened; it really was one of the most heart-breaking things I've ever heard in any film, period.

But, in the second half of the film, as it increasingly devolved into a non-stop series of ridiculous, excessive Horror cliches (including not just one, but two gratuitous nightmare fake-outs in a row), her performance (along with Wolff's) similarly devolved into a lot of non-stop crying, screaming, and general hysterics, which makes me agree with DaMU that her portrayal of Annie lose a lot of its potency due to the nature of its sheer, repetitive over-the-top-ness. It's not an issue of her choosing to chew the scenery or anything, as it seemed to me like she was just matching her performance to the overall tone of the film at Ari Aster's behest, but the absurd tone of Hereditary itself was a problem for me, as it ended up rendering Collette much less effective than she should've been. I'd be okay with her getting an Oscar nom for it, but personally, I would not give her the actual award due to misuse of her talents by the director, and it's a shame a more disciplined filmmaker couldn't have put her considerable skill to better use (like, say, a Sixth Sense-circa M. Knight, even?), because, as her performance in the film stands now, at a certain point it mostly just becomes a tiresome series of Jim Carrey-level facial contortions that are barely less ridiculous in context than they are out of it:


https://i.imgur.com/ix5MJUt.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/u3lyVxi.gif


https://i.imgur.com/yT6ZDwZ.gif


https://i.imgur.com/qHU5EBC.gif

[MadMan]

Heh I keep forgetting about these threads. Anyways this was utterly freaky as hell, and Toni Collette owned this movie.

[Yxklyx]

...But, in the second half of the film, as it increasingly devolved into a non-stop series of ridiculous, excessive Horror cliches (including not just one, but two gratuitous nightmare fake-outs in a row), her performance (along with Wolff's) similarly devolved into a lot of non-stop crying, ...

Have not seen this in a while but I recall the tone shifting towards the end (ala Rosemary's Baby, the ending which some like and some don't) and those horror cliches were part of this shift.

[StuSmallz]

Have not seen this in a while but I recall the tone shifting towards the end (ala Rosemary's Baby, the ending which some like and some don't) and those horror cliches were part of this shift.I know that, but the film's shift towards over-indulging in genre cliches and its increasingly excessive overall tone being intentional decisions on Aster's part doesn't automatically make them the correct creative choices for the movie in question, and in my opinion, it most certainly was not when it comes to Hereditary​.

[Pop Trash]

I mean, couldn't you make the same argument against Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining or Linda Blair's / Mercedes McCambridge's performance in The Exorcist?

If there's a criticism I would have, it's that tonally and structurally it's a little too close to Rosemary's Baby, both with the long slow burn into horror, Ann Dowd basically playing the Ruth Gordon role of the "helpful" neighbor, and the is this / is this not horror red herrings until the other shoe finally drops in the last scene... but there's certainly worse movies to be than a 2k18 Rosemary's Baby homage.

[StuSmallz]

I mean, couldn't you make the same argument against Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining or Linda Blair's / Mercedes McCambridge's performance in The Exorcist?Yes, and couldn't you also make the argument that implying that someone's contradicting themselves if their opinions about separate aspects (like individual performances versus overall tone) of different movies aren't perceived by others as having a total consistency (as if anyone's personal feelings about anything in the history of mankind have ever worked that way) is the definition of a invalid "gotcha" argument? I think you could.