Hereditary

I keep being the negative Nancy about this film. At this point it's like the third or fourth time I watch it, and still it does absolutely nothing for me. And I say this as I cry ugly tears because yes, family drama getting unpacked does get me emotional, thank you very much. But first: let's dive deep into this one, shall we? I absolutely love Ari Aster as a director. The photography of some scenes is crazy good, it reminds me of Kubrick sometimes – and I don't say this lightly. I love the use of slightly unsaturated colors that get darker and darker the more we get to the core of the story. As it turns out, I really don't have anything to say against the artistic direction: Hereditary is, indeed, a cinematically beautiful movie. I will also forever praise Toni Colette's performance and the crazy range of expressions and emotions she manages to deliver in the span of ten minutes. Every ten minutes. So we can safely bet that the sour notes begin and end with the plot. I'll say it as simple as it comes: what. the. fuck? It starts pretty dramatic and it goes on like that for more than one hour – and it lasts two hours so, yeah. It goes on being a dramatic movie for the majority of the time. Then we have the last, I'd say, 45 minutes, where all the horror stuff happens. I'm talking séances and possessions and a full beat coven of crazy naked old people worshipping demons. I was, once again, not impressed by how it gets all thrown together at once. It almost feels like the director thought "shit, we're running out of time!" and casually decided to just go all out on the horror part in the ending. I must also say that I still cannot wrap my head around many aspects of Annie's behaviour towards her son, even if I take into account that she's a grieving mother who subconsciously blames her son for his sister's death. Sometimes I just felt like the director just went with what he thought a mother's grief should look like, but he ended up portraying it in kind of a grotesque, caricature-like way that I don't love. At the end of the day, I am convinced more than ever that Ari Aster is a great director, but he should definitely leave the writing to someone else.