Is 'Hereditary' Really Worth All The Horror Hype? Here's What The Reviews Say
After a crowd-terrorizing smash debut at Sundance earlier this year, first-time writer-director Ari Aster's "Hereditary" has been steadily amassing horror aficionado accolades in the lead-up to it's June 7th release. Now that more critics have had a chance to see it, are the masses just as freaked out as those poor souls in Park City were? Here's what the reviews say:
The Less You Know About The Story, The Better
Every surface is dark and hard in the mammoth house where Annie (Toni Collette), a diorama artist, resides with her husband (Gabriel Byrne) and her two teenage children, the older Peter (Alex Wolff) and younger Charlie (Milly Shapiro). In the days after her emotionally distant mom's passing, Annie re-creates in miniature some of the most formative scenes between mother and adult daughter, like when the older woman would wrest the newborn Charlie from Annie's arms to nurse the baby herself.
[Slate]
Annie tells her husband that she's going off to the movies when she's really attending a grief management circle that meets in a church basement. Peter anesthetizes himself with marijuana. Charlie draws obsessively in a small notebook, and… Well, maybe I shouldn't tell you about the things I was just about to tell you about. Maybe it's better if you just experience the story on your own.
Its Scares Are Drawn-Out And Often Unconventional
If you're going into Hereditary looking for a "scary movie," you're doing it wrong. Better descriptors might be "uncanny," or "unnerving," or "vexing," or "devilish." It's half supernatural horror film, half startlingly realistic drama about a family dealing with grief, and it wants to make you feel marvelously, deliciously uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons, only some of which are about the scary bits.
[Vox]
Jump scares seem like child's play in this filmmaker's hands. His scares are sustained; his visuals are more carefully crafted to play off everyday fears, like a recently departed love one visiting you in the night; and his soundscapes feel like cold water being injected directly into your neck.
[/Film]
Hereditary may be scary, but make no mistake: It. Takes. Its. Time. At just over two hours, the film is essentially divided into two halves. The first of which is a dark family drama. The second half of the film is where the horror comes in. Well, "comes in" is perhaps too light of a term. A more apt metaphor would be that it steamrolls through the barricaded doors and slaps you in the face.
The horror of Hereditary lays not just in scary images but in the creeping sense that free will is a joke, and bad luck can be as inescapable as a family curse.
Toni Collette Is Getting Heaps And Heaps Of Praise
Collette is virtuosic in the role, which requires her to be motherly, depressed, and unhinged by turns.
[Vox]
Annie comes across as a person who's used to routine and she wonders about how much grief she should be feeling after such a major loss. Later, her performance becomes electric, infusing Anne with grief, dread, and mania all anchored in earned sympathy.
[io9]
For all the revelatory performances here, this film belongs to Collette, whose convincing rantings, ravings, and tearful outbursts, mixed with morose long stares, create a totally believable portrait of a grieving woman, even as she genuinely scared me — real grief is terrifying.
Ms. Collette, at once vulnerable and volcanic, solicits our sympathy even as we start to wonder if she might be the real monster.
It's cliché to bring up awards season in a review but in all seriousness: if she doesn't get any kind of awards recognition it will be a damn shame.
Be Prepared For Some Intensely Awful Family Conflict
"Hereditary" is also a terrific entry in the sub-genre of psychodramas about repressed families. The regular eruptions of weirdness, surrealism and nightmare spectacle live in the spaces where family arguments and breakdowns might occur in a realistic movie. The parents and children speak to each other in the language of considerate individuals, but very soon you learn how to spot the passive-aggressive digs, the excuses and deflections, the knife-twists disguised as statements of concern.
Too often in scary movies, the characters are sketches of human beings and act as fodder for whatever force is out there murdering them. But in Hereditary, Aster wants us to identify with the Grahams, to feel their pain, and have a stake in their recovery (assuming they do recover).
[/Film]
Additional information on her family's unfortunate lineage is disclosed slowly and meticulously. We learn more about her past when she is awkwardly pressured in group therapy to disclose the reasons for her attendance – eventually finding solace in one particular attendee, played by Ann Dowd. These scenes exhibit the first signs of comedic relief that end up being necessary mercies Aster thankfully bestows upon viewers. Without these small bursts of dark humor, the film is ruthless in its assault on the senses.
Hereditary revolves around one simple premise: You might not really know your family at all. The people who've raised you may all have insidious secrets writhing around in remote corners of their lives—and those secrets can be shaping your life in ways you can barely perceive.
[io9]
The Camerawork In Particular Will Haunt You
Watching is like playing one of those Photo Hunt spot-the-difference games, trying to suss out what has possibly changed from the last time Aster showed us this room. And once my eye found this new element, I couldn't look away. This game of search-for-the-horror-hiding-in-the-shadows happens multiple times. The audience I saw this with gasped aloud, saying, "Oh God, no" or "Don't do this," in all of those moments. At one point, I instinctively slapped my hand to my forehead in shock.
The camera work is a character in and of itself. The shots are ominous, and grow gradually invasive. The lens evokes a sense that a malevolent presence is seeping into their lives and as the film progresses, the shots become increasingly erratic. The gore is fairly scarce but when present, will scar your retinas.
Aster, his cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, the camera and lighting crew, and the entire sound department deserve special recognition for coming up with creepy moments so specifically imagined that you truly can say you've never seen them before. It's been a while since I looked over my shoulder during a movie, to make sure something sinister wasn't lurking beyond my sightline, but this film made me do it.
Still, Not Everything Aster Does Will Gel For Everyone
First-time writer-director Ari Aster clearly intends to devastate. But Hereditary only begins as a Greek tragedy. After a few too many twists and turns, it gets warped into a horror soap—an unnerving but ultimately numbing pile of calamities.
[Slate]
Aster doesn't (yet) have visual chops that are commensurate with his intelligence and ambition. He loses the pulse in the film's middle section, and maroons us with these suffering people. He gets ponderous.
[Vulture]
Mr. Aster writes an impressive-looking check and succeeds in cashing it, but on close examination the payout turns out to be skimpier than anticipated, and drawn mostly on someone else's account.
Still, no matter that nor the rapturous praise that's preceded its premiere, Aster's maiden feature employs meticulous design and lots of screaming to drum up only so-so suspense, convinced that creeping pans through constricting architecture and random suggestions of paranormal activity will put one on edge—or, at least, keep one engaged until the final five minutes, when all hell breaks loose.
TL;DR
Should you see Hereditary? On one level I'm glad I did because it gives me a new touchstone. Just as the "French Extreme" film Martyrs set a new standard for garish sadism, Hereditary raises the bar on emotional agony. If you want to see things you can never un-see and feel pain you can never un-feel, here's the ultimate test.
[Vulture]
Watch The Trailer
