Movie review: "Hereditary"

THROND'S CHOICE
written and directed by Ari Aster
I'm not very well versed in the horror genre, but when I do watch horror films, I tend to prefer them to be on the artsy side. Great films like The Babadook and The Witch have been major highlights of their respective years, and the latter established distribution company A24 as a major purveyor of weird, artsy horror films, with a similarly harrowing release in last year's It Comes at Night cementing this reputation. Even more than the aforementioned films, however, Ari Aster's Sundance hit Hereditary seems tailor-made to alienate mainstream audiences, an exquisite slow burn which only explodes very late into its running time.

It's peculiar, then, that what holds Hereditary back from greatness is that it's not weird enough. While certain themes are carried through into the horror elements, others actively compete with them, resulting in the curious effect that the film becomes less moving as it gets scarier. Approximately half of Hereditary is a powerful meditation on grief and guilt, while the other half is a sharp, imaginative modern horror feature. But despite the latter half gaining much of its effectiveness from the former, the actual imagery offered here has very little to do with the psychological depth which the film is so successful in establishing. But even with that disconnect, it's hard to resist a movie which is this accomplished on a scene-to-scene basis.

Describing the plot of Hereditary without spoilers is a difficult task, as it's a film dependent on several significant twists and revelations to the point where simply describing the initial setup - a woman (Annie, played by Toni Collette) and her family continue their lives after her mother's death - is entirely misleading despite being technically accurate. The tragedies befalling this family don't stop with the mother's death, but again, it's hard to speak beyond that without spoiling, especially for a movie as worth watching as this.

Indeed, the film spends most of its running time as more of a dark psychological drama than a horror movie, using the language of horror films both to create an intangible atmosphere of dread and to underline the psychological torment inflicted on this family through entirely realistic scenarios. Dark shadows and tense drones loom over simple scenes of these people just trying to get by in their lives, and while their troubled history is slowly doled out in expository spurts, it's apparent in every lingering shot of the actors' faces and every pregnant pause in conversation. Purely based on audiovisual style, this is undeniably a horror film, and yet it's well over an hour before more traditional horror elements rear their head. 

Instead, what the film offers is an examination of grief and guilt, peeling back old layers of trauma while consecutively adding new ones. The most horrific images here aren't demons or serial killers, but instead accidents. Sleepwalking, for instance, plays a dramatic yet entirely grounded role. Even more heart-wrenching than the central plot beats, however, are lingering emotions, and at its best, Hereditary isn't scary so much as heartbreaking. Every single performer here is excellent, and while Collette steals the show, Alex Wolff also does a remarkable job expressing the angst of first child Peter, and Milly Shapiro comfortably straddles the line between endearing and unsettling as the quirky younger child Charlie. Alongside the father, Steve, each of these characters is three-dimensional and sympathetic even as they make bad decisions, and each one of them is distinctive in their internal torment. 

Hereditary is as expertly shot as any horror film in recent memory, and even before the more traditional horror elements come into play, its imagery is precise and haunting. Mysterious lights in the distance, hallucinations lurking in the shadows, exhausted faces draped in silence - these aren't even the most memorable images of the film's dramatic half, and once the supernatural elements begin, the film is still patient in letting out its most extreme tricks, and it's this patience which lends them much of their power. Because a full hour passes before the supernatural elements are introduced, the protagonists' actions are given psychological complexity, which makes the already disturbing imagery an extra punch. And while not every image is as effective as it might have been, almost all of the horror elements are either abstract enough to evoke a sense of dark mystery, evocatively unsettling, or at least memorably horrific.

Alas, while the film is highly effective both as a simple horror film and as a dark psychological drama, these two halves increasingly don't mix very well, and several of the later scares are self-evidently disturbing in ways which don't really echo the themes of guilt and grief which had been building up for a good majority of the running time. In the early going, the more unnerving beats are effective in subtly foreshadowing what's to come, but the third act is largely devoid of subtext, only evoking the very broad subject of inheriting something terrible. The ending in particular is incredibly straightforward, and despite not being altogether terrible - the gorgeously dread-soaked aesthetic remains intact, if nothing else - it's also very simple and fails to present a closing statement for even one of the film's dangling thematic threads.

That's the big disappointment of Hereditary, a highly accomplished horror film with too many contradictory elements. As a debut, it's every bit as confident as The Witch was two years earlier, and it's much less conventional than was It Comes at Night. Alas, despite so many of the right ingredients being in place, it falls just short of masterpiece status due to an inability to truly take advantage of the metaphorical potential of horror. And yet, this is such an idiosyncratic, patient, and genuinely moving motion picture, filled with so much haunting imagery and so many disturbing concepts, that it's hard not to admire. Hereditary occasionally feels like two films competing with each other, but it's never a distraction, and when both films are as great as they are here, the end result remains easy to recommend. Just be prepared for the imperfections.

8/10

+ Filled to the brim with disturbing imagery.
+ Admirably patient yet suffused with dread.
+ Extremely powerful family drama.
+ Successfully uses horror film language to enhance even the most uneventful scenes.
- Horror elements don't resonate with the first half's themes at all.
- Disappointing ending.
- One or two scares are a little silly.

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Todd Throndson
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