And as the film played out the comparisons to The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby started to become clear. The film embraces its supernatural subject without trying to cloak it in an “is it madness or is it ghosts” esthetic. It is a slow burn sort of horror where the film becomes more and more uncomfortable as it goes along. People are ugly and mean to each other. There aren’t clear good people and bad. It is an exercise in exploring darkness within families and Aster’s calm hand through it all is unsettling to the audience.
But as the film wound up to its conclusion I started to notice how much Hereditary owed to many horror films of the past beyond just its style and craftsmanship. The thing that left me the most cold at the end wasn’t the way the characters fall apart and the way the evil crushes them. It was how predictable, how familiar, how unsurprising the plot was. I am not going to spoil the story as I feel that for many reasons Hereditary is worth seeing and experiencing. However I found the story and its conclusion to be rather bland and disappointing.
For me a film’s power lies mostly in its story. Films that prioritize style over substance, form or content, tend to leave me wanting more. The story of a horror film needs to get under my skin in some way for me to love it. I am not sure Hereditary was able to do that. I left thinking about film craft choices and the incredibly strong performance of Toni Collette at the centre of the film. But I didn’t leave ruminating on the story of feeling chills. I left feeling intellectually about the film not viscerally.
And for me that just isn’t enough to call the film great. It is certainly interesting academically but as an emotional experience Hereditary left me feeling blah.
Hereditary
Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne
Writer/Director: Ari Aster
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