Hereditary (2018)

Toni Collette (Krampus, The Boxtrolls) stars as diorama model artist Annie Graham, a wife to the reliable Steve (Byrne, Louder Than Bombs) and mother of two teenagers, Peter (Wolff, Patriots Day) and Charlie (Shapiro), whose secretive, manipulative and mostly estranged mother has recently died.  In a way, it’s a relief, and yet it causes her some guilt and grief as well, embodied in her habit of sleepwalking while also encountering strange and horrific visions of herself or her children in harmful danger.  It is affecting the kids as well, with Peter engaging in drugs and Charlie beginning to believe she is being communicated with from the secretive and eccentric grandmother who she feels looked out for her the most.

Writer-director Ari Aster, his first feature after helming a series of shorts, brings forward a rare (in these times) slow-burn horror film that develops its characters and storyline first, rather than rely on manufactured jump-scares.  His use of parallels and foreshadowing is quite good, such as a tie-on with Greek tragedies, and the use of dolls as a means to show how humans are often manipulated by larger forces to do what’s intended.  The burn is so slow that after the first half of the film, I wondered why a straightforward family drama is being shot as a horror film, perhaps as a commercial consideration, as straight dramas are no longer in vogue for a wide release motion picture in this day and age.  Given its melodramatic leanings for much of the picture, those expecting some good jolts in their horror to be early and often may grow impatient, while others who prefer to care about the characters in their chillers before they undergo supernatural upheaval will appreciate the time Aster takes in establishing the family and their histories before we see how the nightmarish events that transpire begin to affect them.

Solid acting bolsters the film into something that feels weightier than a typical chiller, with Toni Collette truly magnificent as a paranoid and painfully conflicted daughter, mother and wife whose emotional distance to everyone over many years has resulting in her continued feeling of isolation in a time of need, one in which she ends up reaching out to support groups and a woman, Joan, who has undergone a similar loss, and tells her to come by when she needs an attentive ear.  Alex Wolff is also rock solid as the teenager who doesn’t want to accept the ills of the world, even ones he may have committed, choosing to deflect his feelings onto others, or just smothering them in a state of highness to hope to cope until the next phase.

Colin Stetson’s (Lavender) unsettling score is effective when used, working in concert with Pawel Pogorzelski’s (Tragedy Girls) dark and ambient cinematography, not getting in the way during the quieter moments, but also not overly dramatizing the scarier elements of the action to the point where it feels manipulative.  More people will be unnerved by other sounds that come into play, such as Charlie’s habit of clucking her tongue from time to time, particularly when feeling anxiety (which, in turn, we feel along with her).  For as many of the quirks given to each character, though, there’s not really a point in which we feel we truly get to know these characters as real people, always keeping us on the realm of observers, which does continue to keep us at a distance to the terror-filled sequences meant to draw us in to the familial upheaval.

Perhaps the biggest reason as to why I’m not ecstatic about Hereditary, despite having admiration for it, is due to the number of prolonged lulls in its story, exacerbated by a two-hour-and-minute run time, perhaps a half hour longer than what is necessary to tell the same tale.  I’m all for atmosphere, but I’m not one who thinks atmosphere means needlessly lingering long within a scene before something that might possibly be significant happens.  There are only four prominent characters in the film, with the father given the least amount of background.  Lots of exploration into the nervous ticks and layers of coping mechanisms for their individual anxieties are established, which provides some good basis for psychological analysis, even if the story takes a logn time to coalesce into something more meaningful.

Another reason for my reticence is that the film maintains a certain predictability in where things are going, though it isn’t as bad as some popular examples in recent years.  Films like The Witch, The Babadook, and It Comes At Night have been remarkable for effective and different takes on the subject of families ripped apart from guilt and fear, but Hereditary is sold more by a talented cast than by suspenseful terror or in trying to upend traditional storytelling.  Givn the Greek tragedy allusions, it’s actually a very old form of storytelling, even though it is given a modern-day genre sheen that will make people think it’s something contemporary in its delivery.  The notion of free will is something the ancient Greeks would dabble with, but often ended up in tragic results, and so it comes to pass in Hereditary.  Much like our own heredity, we are who we are by design, and nothing can change that.

Hereditary is well crafted enough to give a recommendation to for those who enjoy slow-burn horror with good performances and some interesting subject matter underneath propelling the terror.   It’s a freaky film, full of notions of the eerie nature of cults and the dangers they provide.  Nevertheless, while the film is arresting from time to time, if you’re expecting something more, you may leave the theater feeling less than satisfied on the film as a whole than you enjoyed a few of its individual parts.

Qwipster’s rating: B

MPAA Rated: R for horror violence, disturbing images, language, drug use and brief graphic nudity
Running Time: 127 min.

Cast: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd
Director: Ari Aster
Screenplay: Ari Aster