Hereditary (2018) - Review
Originally published January, 2019I heard a lot of positive talk surrounding Hereditary when it came out. People were stunned, horrified, and mystified by this creepy new horror movie that was "unlike anything else." Allegedly, there were moments you couldn't prepare for. It was an artistic horror masterpiece of unpredictable and nightmarish scenarios. And everyone that talked about it with such high praise was also rather careful to remain ambiguous in their details so as not spoil any surprises. I waited for it to come to a streaming service before watching it for myself, but I was already starting to get concerned that I was going to end up feeling the same about Hereditary as I did for other "masterpieces" like Get Out and The Babadook.
What I will say about Hereditary is that it is an artistic showcase of horror. By comparison, Get Out and The Babadook are far more traditional and straightforward in the horror story they're trying to tell. Hereditary is an intriguing experience because of how deliberate and abstract it ends up being. Nonetheless, when you reduce it down to the plot and you break up the individual moments that have any meaning or relevance, you end up with a weird mixture of Rosemary's Baby, The Witch, The Conjuring, and a little bit of A Clockwork Orange. And all that blended together doesn't really taste that great to me.
Pros
Great acting
Unsettling music
Cool cinematography and camera effects
Occasional creepy or surprising scene
Strong climax
Cons
Movie feels so much longer than it is
First half is almost aimless in its plot and pacing
Ending does not quite pay everything off
Everything ends up a bit convoluted and confusing as to why everything is happening and how
Big plot twists are kind of disappointing
Plot & Thoughts
Annie (Toni Collette) is a troubled woman with some family issues. Her mother, with whom she had a very rocky relationship, just died. Her son, Peter (Alex Wolff), is something of an aimless stoner and has a very passive-aggressive relationship with her. Her daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who appears to have some learning/social disabilities, is having difficulty coping with the death of her grandmother. Her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), the calmest and most passive of the group, does his best to be a helpful father and husband in keeping the family together, but even he has his limits after a while. Despite the best efforts of her husband, Annie still finds herself troubled over her mixture of emotions surrounding her mother's death, as well as with the added stress of an upcoming art exhibit she's doing with extensively detailed dioramas.
Annie tries going to self-help groups and attempts to keep her emotions in check, but she can't quite shake the presence of her mother in the house. Considering the fact that all of her dioramas are centered around events in her life, no matter how bizarre or horrible, it's easy to see why she wouldn't be able to completely move on from her relationship with her mother. The self-help confessions, the dioramas, and brief character interactions are where the movie does some exposition and gives hints as to what it's about without being too flagrant. Hereditary does this sort of storytelling well in that it gives the audience just enough to know that we're learning some important clues, but the actual meaning of those clues remain a mystery. The problem is that when you've learned many of these clues in what feels like the first hour, it has actually only been about twenty minutes.
Hereditary is a very slow-burn horror film. I enjoy a good slow-burn film from time to time—Under the Skin is an example of a slow-burn horror movie that I liked, even with all its artistic touches that might have turned some people off. However, my favorite slow-burns do not feel like 4-hours long when I finish them. No joke: When we hit the big, surprising moment in the movie that sets everything in motion (30-minutes in), I thought we were more than half-way done. My sense of time was completely thrown off by how Hereditary operates, and a lot of that has to do with the editing, cinematography, and direction.
Everything in this movie is very slow and deliberate. There are countless scenes in which the actual shot is far longer than your average Hollywood shot of <5 seconds. The cameras are still for much of these, but even when they do occasionally move, it's very slowly. In the opening sequence (which is very cool), where the camera pans around the room of dioramas and zooms into one that fills the screen and becomes the setting for the scene, in one long take, takes about 5 minutes to do. Scene after scene involves very little or slow movement from the characters or the camera, with many wide angles for you to soak in the scenery and feel like you're viewing each room in this house of horrors like a diorama. This lack of movement and cuts in the scenes make everything feel a lot longer than it is and it enhances the speed and frenetic nature of the climax when everything gets way faster.
If you can't tell, I'm a little mixed on how I feel about Hereditary. I respect it for the creative camera work and the deliberate nature of the direction, which forces the actors to do an even better job than normal due to all the lengthy shots. There's a lot of cool and creepy moments in this movie that resonate in my mind. It also puts a lot more effort into its character development than most other horror films. It is incredibly effective at making the viewer uncomfortable. However, the slow-burn nature of it backfires a little bit for me because of the fact that the film seems somewhat aimless for the first act. It spends a lot of time developing the characters in a way that I had hoped would not only make me care about the characters, but answer more questions by the end. When the movie finally started moving and it felt like a plot had finally taken shape, I was hopeful that the slow buildup would lead to a big payoff with some answers to my questions. Alas, I had far more questions when the credits started to roll than I did in the first half. While the climax had some good moments, it wasn't the payoff I was looking for.
I think the main issue with Hereditary is that it's a little unbalanced, though, that might also be intentional. It seems to be slowly leading you down a path in one direction and then, in a sudden burst of speed, hits you in the head, disorienting you and sending you in a new direction while a piece of you is left behind on the side of the road wondering what happened. Again, I thought it was awesome when the big moments happened and I was completely thrown off or creeped out. The problem with those moments is that, whenever it happened, I couldn't help building up my expectations of some big payoff at the end because it did such a good job of setting up those big heel-turns.
As the movie moves closer and closer to its end, the events get more intense and a lot of the horror becomes psychological with Annie being an unreliable protagonist whom the audience can't trust. However, the actual plot twists of the film just disappoint. When everything wrapped up, I couldn't help but feel that there were some missed opportunities. Perhaps it's unfair to the film to have had such high expectations, but it also didn't help that there seemed like a number of important plot points or clues that were missing or skipped in the final act that would have helped make sense of the whole thing.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Hereditary manages to do some creepy and cool things you don't normally get to see in a horror movie. The camera angles, the long takes, the direction, and the acting all work well together to create an uncomfortable experience unlike most others. The side effect to these stylistic choices is that the experience drags and builds up the plot in a way that would make it almost impossible for any ending to satisfy one's expectations. I definitely want more horror movies like Hereditary to exist; I want horror movies to take more creative risks, focus on characterization, and attempt being scary without resorting to clichés or jump-scares. I just hope that those movies come up with some better plots.
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