Hereditary
(2018. Director: Ari Aster Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne)
SYNOPSIS:
After the death of her reclusive and controlling mother, Annie (Toni Collette) struggles to hold her family together while dealing with grief and anger. Soon after she begins to find out that her family is about to receive a more sinister inheritance and the horror is only just beginning."They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you."
- Philip Larkin 1971.
Family can be hell.
Anyone who has returned to their childhood home for the whole Christmas period can probably attest to how quickly excitement at seeing long missed loved ones can turn into a desperate desire to escape back to your own space where no-one makes you feel like an eternal disappointment, demands that everyone watch Mrs Browns Boys or mistakes the Daily Mail for a reliable source for political reportage. However, very few families have had to deal with anything quite as horrifying as the nightmare which descends on the Graham family in Ari Aster's startling debut feature Hereditary.
The film begins in silence as an onscreen newspaper obituary tells us of the passing of Ellen, the matriarch of the family. It describes her as a loving grandmother who will be missed greatly by her survivors. It's not strictly true. Ellen was a strange woman who kept secrets and made bizarre demands of her family. Her death appears to receive little more than a shrug from her cynical son-in-law Steve (Gabriel Byrne) or her rebellious teenage grandson Peter (Alex Wolff). The brunt of this loss is therefore put on the shoulders of her daughter Annie (Toni Collette) who is both the person who cared the most for Ellen during her mental and physical decline and the person most victimised by her cruel, controlling nature. Collette brilliantly encapsulates the range of conflicting emotions caused by being finally separated from the remaining trappings of her childhood. She is in equal parts saddened by the loss of someone who appears to have loved her in her own strange way (and who was an intrinsic part of the woman she became) as she is elated to finally be free from her traumatic upbringing and to remove that toxic influence from her own children. However, as it turns out, just because we are done with the past does not mean that the past is done with us.
It's hard to say much more about Hereditary without giving anything away. This is a film which plays fast and loose with audience expectations. Shocking twists and revelations come early in the plot which upend the perceived direction which the story seems to be heading in. Hereditary is a film about loss, and how we deal with it, but it is also a film about fate and the inherent tragedy of having your life's journey chosen for you whether due to family pressure, genetic inheritance or societal influences beyond your control (and often beyond your understanding). Yes, on the surface this is a film about supernatural terrors invading a family home and tearing at it's veneer of loving safety, but it is also about the very real horror which already resides there in our fears and resentments, hiding in the words we choose not say to each other; threatening to break free and consume us with rage and guilt and spite.
Annie expresses herself through sculpting scale models of scenes of her world. At first this appears as if she is simply building doll houses, tapping into a childlike fascination with toys. But, as the scenes represented in them become more odd and uncomfortable, it becomes clear that she is simply trying to recreate the most difficult moments of her life, as if doing so will allow her to exert some control over them. It's a lost cause. Aster's camera floats around her house with a disturbing remove from the action but presses deep into these models blurring the difference between the real world and the constructed one. It doesn't matter which we are looking at. Both houses are built on a false foundation, and the people who reside in both are merely playthings to larger powers, with no agency in the roles that have been chosen for them.
There is no lack of spookiness and nightmarish imagery in Hereditary. (One particular scare is slowly built up with some of the most effect use of light and shadow seen on screen this year.) However most of this is saved for the film's frankly bonkers last third when all pretence of plausibility is thrown away for an accelerating descent into the diabolical which is sure to divide audiences. (Most of the film's critics focus entirely on this part of the film rather than it's brilliantly understated early sequences. However, it's hard to see how else the film could end which would feel like a natural culmination of the plot and themes already established). Despite this, most of the terror in Hereditary is of the existential kind. This is a film that is not just interested in the things which go bump in the night but on the self-destructive thoughts which keep you awake at all hours to hear them.
In one early but telling scene, Annie admits to the long history of trauma and mental illness which has plagued her family for at least a whole generation prior to the movie's timeline. It isn't discussed further but, once revealed, a cloud of doubt hangs over the rest of the film. The fear of inheriting the worst traits of an abusive relative are bad enough, even without the further disquieting idea that some of these actions and behaviours could be spurred on by an illness that could be literally inherited genetically. The characters in Hereditary are already haunted, long before the time when they are, well, haunted and there is always a suspicion that what we are witnessing may simply be the symptoms of their traumas writ large. Instead of the typical dread of monsters threatening you and your loved ones, Hereditary is a film about the suspicion that you do not really know your loved ones and that they may have a threatening monstrousness hidden within them (or worse, that you do not really know yourself and that you could destroy those you love with the inner darkness which you can't bare to gaze at.) Similar to Alex Garland's brilliant Annihilation, released earlier this year, this film is about a group of characters being transformed beyond recognition by a malignant, unnatural force which seems to feed off of the destructive impulses they carry with them.
The film is a technical marvel throughout. Beyond Aster's steady controlled visual skill (showing stunning confidence and restraint for a feature debut) the film also boasts effectively jarring sound design and a brilliantly unnerving score from Colin Stetson. The acting is perfect across the board too. Gabriel Byrne gives expectedly steady support as the tired father figure trying to avoid confrontation and deal with the film's horror through dispassionate logic. In contrast, Alex Wolff gives a surely star-making performance as the son so utterly overcome by this nightmare as to become a catatonic husk of the boy he was. However, this is Toni Collette's film. Much like Essie Davis' role in 2014's The Babadook, this is the type of central performance which balances moments of subtle nuance with sheer balls-to-the-wall insanity and would inspire discussions of Oscar nominations if found in a less easily dismissed genre of film. (Although hopefully the recent attention given to the likes of Get Out, The Shape of Water and Mad Max: Fury Road show that Academy voters are now more open to rewarding work outside of typical 'Oscar movies.') "I did...love her" says Annie of her deceased mother in one early scene and Collette manages to imbue that pregnant pause in the middle with more repressed anger, resentment, guilt and sadness than many actors have managed with whole monologues. Collette has been a reliable talent on our screens for over two decades but Annie Graham may just be her best role.
When interviewed, Aster has been keen to state that he didn't approach Hereditary as simply a horror movie but as a "family tragedy which curdles into a nightmare." This has led to a lot of discussion over whether Hereditary should even be described as a horror movie to begin with. It's a rather silly argument and one which says more about the cynical approach we have to the label of 'horror cinema' than it does about Hereditary itself. There is an unfair idea that when people talk of 'horror' they are merely referring to the kind of cheap trashy nonsense that Hollywood releases every Halloween for easy ticket sales (whether that comes in the form of grimly meaningless torture porn, hacky remakes of old classics or lazy spook stories thrown together for no purpose beyond acting as vehicles for lazy jump scares which jolt audiences out of their seats multiple times but leave them with nothing to think about or even remember once the lights come up.) This is sadly embraced by film marketing departments who feel the need to promote every major horror release as "the scariest film in years" which ends up filling screens with the type of morons who go to Indian restaurants solely to order 'the hottest thing on the menu' in an attempt to overcompensate for their own fragile masculinity. Many screenings of Hereditary have apparently already been ruined by these people loudly talking and laughing throughout the film as if in some desperate need to prove to others how completely 'not-scared' they are as if that would matter to anyone. Regardless, whether a horror film succeeds as a story, or as a producer of scares, it still deserves to be treated with the same respect we give to other films.
Due to this type of reaction, recent, more cerebral and thematically powerful films like the aforementioned The Babadook and The VVitch (an earlier release by Hereditary's distributor A24) are often being 'rewarded' with promotion from horror to a more 'respectable' genre. This is patronising to these films and an insult to the fantastic history of deeply affecting art produced in horror cinema both past and present. Hereditary bears some resemblance to both of these previous films (as well as to Iranian horror-drama Under the Shadow from last year) However, the film it seems to most take the most influence from (especially in its subtly paranoid earlier scenes) is the quietly foreboding Rosemary's Baby (which was crossing the line between personal drama and religious terror all the way back in 1968.)
Whether you approach Hereditary as a standard horror movie, full of demons and ghosts, or as a family drama, built on inner demons and the ghosts of memory, it is a deeply disturbing film, full of unforgettable imagery and startling power. We recommend you watch it. But be warned, it may not haunt you in the ways the expect but in ways that are less obvious and much more unsettling.
It's hard to say much more about Hereditary without giving anything away. This is a film which plays fast and loose with audience expectations. Shocking twists and revelations come early in the plot which upend the perceived direction which the story seems to be heading in. Hereditary is a film about loss, and how we deal with it, but it is also a film about fate and the inherent tragedy of having your life's journey chosen for you whether due to family pressure, genetic inheritance or societal influences beyond your control (and often beyond your understanding). Yes, on the surface this is a film about supernatural terrors invading a family home and tearing at it's veneer of loving safety, but it is also about the very real horror which already resides there in our fears and resentments, hiding in the words we choose not say to each other; threatening to break free and consume us with rage and guilt and spite.
Annie expresses herself through sculpting scale models of scenes of her world. At first this appears as if she is simply building doll houses, tapping into a childlike fascination with toys. But, as the scenes represented in them become more odd and uncomfortable, it becomes clear that she is simply trying to recreate the most difficult moments of her life, as if doing so will allow her to exert some control over them. It's a lost cause. Aster's camera floats around her house with a disturbing remove from the action but presses deep into these models blurring the difference between the real world and the constructed one. It doesn't matter which we are looking at. Both houses are built on a false foundation, and the people who reside in both are merely playthings to larger powers, with no agency in the roles that have been chosen for them.
There is no lack of spookiness and nightmarish imagery in Hereditary. (One particular scare is slowly built up with some of the most effect use of light and shadow seen on screen this year.) However most of this is saved for the film's frankly bonkers last third when all pretence of plausibility is thrown away for an accelerating descent into the diabolical which is sure to divide audiences. (Most of the film's critics focus entirely on this part of the film rather than it's brilliantly understated early sequences. However, it's hard to see how else the film could end which would feel like a natural culmination of the plot and themes already established). Despite this, most of the terror in Hereditary is of the existential kind. This is a film that is not just interested in the things which go bump in the night but on the self-destructive thoughts which keep you awake at all hours to hear them.
In one early but telling scene, Annie admits to the long history of trauma and mental illness which has plagued her family for at least a whole generation prior to the movie's timeline. It isn't discussed further but, once revealed, a cloud of doubt hangs over the rest of the film. The fear of inheriting the worst traits of an abusive relative are bad enough, even without the further disquieting idea that some of these actions and behaviours could be spurred on by an illness that could be literally inherited genetically. The characters in Hereditary are already haunted, long before the time when they are, well, haunted and there is always a suspicion that what we are witnessing may simply be the symptoms of their traumas writ large. Instead of the typical dread of monsters threatening you and your loved ones, Hereditary is a film about the suspicion that you do not really know your loved ones and that they may have a threatening monstrousness hidden within them (or worse, that you do not really know yourself and that you could destroy those you love with the inner darkness which you can't bare to gaze at.) Similar to Alex Garland's brilliant Annihilation, released earlier this year, this film is about a group of characters being transformed beyond recognition by a malignant, unnatural force which seems to feed off of the destructive impulses they carry with them.
The film is a technical marvel throughout. Beyond Aster's steady controlled visual skill (showing stunning confidence and restraint for a feature debut) the film also boasts effectively jarring sound design and a brilliantly unnerving score from Colin Stetson. The acting is perfect across the board too. Gabriel Byrne gives expectedly steady support as the tired father figure trying to avoid confrontation and deal with the film's horror through dispassionate logic. In contrast, Alex Wolff gives a surely star-making performance as the son so utterly overcome by this nightmare as to become a catatonic husk of the boy he was. However, this is Toni Collette's film. Much like Essie Davis' role in 2014's The Babadook, this is the type of central performance which balances moments of subtle nuance with sheer balls-to-the-wall insanity and would inspire discussions of Oscar nominations if found in a less easily dismissed genre of film. (Although hopefully the recent attention given to the likes of Get Out, The Shape of Water and Mad Max: Fury Road show that Academy voters are now more open to rewarding work outside of typical 'Oscar movies.') "I did...love her" says Annie of her deceased mother in one early scene and Collette manages to imbue that pregnant pause in the middle with more repressed anger, resentment, guilt and sadness than many actors have managed with whole monologues. Collette has been a reliable talent on our screens for over two decades but Annie Graham may just be her best role.
When interviewed, Aster has been keen to state that he didn't approach Hereditary as simply a horror movie but as a "family tragedy which curdles into a nightmare." This has led to a lot of discussion over whether Hereditary should even be described as a horror movie to begin with. It's a rather silly argument and one which says more about the cynical approach we have to the label of 'horror cinema' than it does about Hereditary itself. There is an unfair idea that when people talk of 'horror' they are merely referring to the kind of cheap trashy nonsense that Hollywood releases every Halloween for easy ticket sales (whether that comes in the form of grimly meaningless torture porn, hacky remakes of old classics or lazy spook stories thrown together for no purpose beyond acting as vehicles for lazy jump scares which jolt audiences out of their seats multiple times but leave them with nothing to think about or even remember once the lights come up.) This is sadly embraced by film marketing departments who feel the need to promote every major horror release as "the scariest film in years" which ends up filling screens with the type of morons who go to Indian restaurants solely to order 'the hottest thing on the menu' in an attempt to overcompensate for their own fragile masculinity. Many screenings of Hereditary have apparently already been ruined by these people loudly talking and laughing throughout the film as if in some desperate need to prove to others how completely 'not-scared' they are as if that would matter to anyone. Regardless, whether a horror film succeeds as a story, or as a producer of scares, it still deserves to be treated with the same respect we give to other films.
Due to this type of reaction, recent, more cerebral and thematically powerful films like the aforementioned The Babadook and The VVitch (an earlier release by Hereditary's distributor A24) are often being 'rewarded' with promotion from horror to a more 'respectable' genre. This is patronising to these films and an insult to the fantastic history of deeply affecting art produced in horror cinema both past and present. Hereditary bears some resemblance to both of these previous films (as well as to Iranian horror-drama Under the Shadow from last year) However, the film it seems to most take the most influence from (especially in its subtly paranoid earlier scenes) is the quietly foreboding Rosemary's Baby (which was crossing the line between personal drama and religious terror all the way back in 1968.)
Whether you approach Hereditary as a standard horror movie, full of demons and ghosts, or as a family drama, built on inner demons and the ghosts of memory, it is a deeply disturbing film, full of unforgettable imagery and startling power. We recommend you watch it. But be warned, it may not haunt you in the ways the expect but in ways that are less obvious and much more unsettling.
Review by The Mogul.
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