Hereditary

I first saw Hereditary during lockdown in early 2020. I’d seen Ari Aster’s next film Midsommar already: I liked it at the time, and was terrified by certain scenes, but I didn’t love it, so I knew Hereditary would be a step up. I turned off the lights, put my headphones on loud, and was not disappointed: not one bit. Hereditary was one of the few horror films that genuinely freaked me out, got under my skin, and cost me sleep the night I saw it. As soon as it finished, Ari Aster’s Hereditary was cemented as an all-time favorite of mine. Thankfully, A24 had partnered up with IMAX for a special one-night-only re-release of the film. So I decided to miss a meeting with my school paper, take a break from my final papers, and head up to AMC Tysons Corner to revisit one of the all-time great horror pictures on the biggest screen I could find. Needless to say, it holds up brilliantly on the big screen. It still amazes me that this was Aster’s debut feature. I know that he had been making short films in the years before Hereditary’s release, but watching Hereditary, you’d think this guy had been making films for years. He has such a distinct visual and sonic style with his debut, that it’s no wonder Midsommar was released only a year later to equal fanfare. That striking style and confidence that Aster brings to his debut held up even more on the big screen: he makes a claustrophobic family drama-horror feel like an epic. And this was only a preview of the ambitious, surreal epics that would come from Aster in the form of Midsommar and the phenomenal Beau is Afraid. It’s exceptionally difficult for a filmmaker to knock it out of the park with their debut, even more so to keep that strength going with their next features, but Aster overcomes those hurdles, cementing him as one of the greatest, most singular writer-directors working today. Right from the quietly unsettling opening sequence, Hereditary is one stylish thriller. We open on the first of many long tracking shots, which only enhance the eerie atmosphere. Any other filmmaker would cut constantly during dialogue scenes, and use generic-looking coverage, but Aster draws attention to the meticulous blocking and shot compositions in each scene. It’s so refreshing to see a filmmaker today pay so much attention to the cinematic language, especially in a widely-released genre film like this in a post-MTV cinematic landscape. Digital cinematography has rarely looked as good as it does in Aster’s films, thanks in part to some ominous lighting that recalls older horror films. The film is also quite visually striking, with the subtle color palette adding to the sense of dread. The first time I saw the film was on a Prime Video copy, which had kind of an ugly brownish-yellow tint to it; on the big screen, that isn’t there, and the film looks gorgeous now. Besides the great wide shots, Aster knows damn well how to shoot an intimate, unsettling closeup; these are especially common during the tense scenes between Annie and Peter, as the camera lets every unflattering detail of Toni Collette and Alex Wolff’s angry and panicked faces shine, and in turn it lets their performances shine. This style is not without purpose, however: the wide camera shots reveal some subtle but significant details within each scene—this is most apparent during the last scenes, when the camera pans up to reveal a possessed, wall-crawling Toni Collette. Most scenes are shot in a shallow depth of field to make the actors and the Graham house look smaller compared to the rest of the world, a visual motif that recalls the dollhouse dioramas that Annie builds—a striking motif that symbolizes Joan and Ellen’s control over the Graham family. A major reason why Hereditary is so scary is the sound design. Even during quiet moments, the absence of sound gives the audience a brutal sense of dread, aided by a loud warbling bass sound. That sound is more noticeable in IMAX, and certainly got my heart pumping. The loud jump scares we see and hear in horror are less present here, where the quieter sounds or absence of sound is what unsettles us. Colin Stetson’s avant-garde score is one of the most effective soundtracks I’ve heard this century, mixed beautifully with the already-remarkable sound design. Rather than opting for a traditional scary-strings horror score, Stetson crafts a surreal, sometimes synth-heavy soundscape that makes for a distinct, memorable score. Some music cues and sounds from the film will forever be burned into my mind. By grounding this supernatural story in reality, Aster makes the fear the characters feel believable. Instead of a generic dilapidated haunted house that we’d see in a James Wan picture, we have a seemingly ordinary, pretty home in the middle of the woods, luring us into a false sense of security when we meet the Graham family; would The Shining, The Exorcist, or Hereditary have nearly the power to scare that they do if they were set in rickety haunted houses? That basis in reality is exactly what made the great 70s horror films effective, a feeling Hereditary captures brilliantly: even in a real-world setting, we can’t trust anyone or anything in horror. And by focusing on a dysfunctional family grieving a lost grandmother - who just so happens to run a secret satanic cult - as well as their generational trauma, (hence the title), Hereditary just as well as a human drama as it does a horror picture. The story contains a humanity and complexity to its characters that allows it to transcend the genre, like into the greatest horror pictures do. Like Don’t Look Now and The Babadook, this manages to be an emotionally devastating portrayal of grief and generational trauma while still delivering on scares. And it delivers on slow, deliberate scares with tense buildup. There are very few jump scares (the biggest jumpscare in the movie is the bird hitting the window of Charlie’s school), refreshing for modern horror. When it comes to graphic imagery, this film is ballsy for what it gets away with depicting onscreen. It’s not every day that a film gets away with showing a child getting decapitated and showing the decomposing roadkill. The violence here is horrific but not gratuitous, as Aster is smart enough to leave the most unbearable moments offscreen. What’s more unsettling about scenes like this is not the mere fact that it’s a child death: it’s Annie’s offscreen screams when she finds the body, and it’s Peter unable to process the fact that he and his mother are responsible for the death of the youngest child. The cult of Paimon, the naked old people, and the decapitations would be all this movie had going for it with another filmmaker at the helm, but Aster subverts enough classic cliches and keeps the buildup going sufficiently enough to make the horror-leaning conclusion pay off. This is not a fun horror movie you can stuff your face with popcorn to, or a very enjoyable experience per se— it’s a horror film in every sense of the term, that intends to break the audience; and it succeeds in that respect. However, none of Hereditary would work without the brilliant cast of Toni Collette as the troubled matriarch Annie, a subdued Gabriel Byrne as the passive husband Steve, Alex Wolff as the equally-troubled teenage son Peter, Ann Dowd as Joan the medium, a character we always know is a little off, and especially Milly Shapiro in her creepy debut performance as the youngest, bird-decapitating daughter Charlie, whose tongue clicks remain one of the creepiest motifs in horror. Everyone has talked to death about Toni Collette’s incredible performance in that, and I’m going to echo those sentiments: she is terrific here. She gives one of the greatest, maybe THE greatest acting performance in any horror film. The iconic dinner scene is beyond moving, horrific, and upsetting, thanks in no small part to her. The way she is able to contort her face and body as Annie descends into madness and possession makes her plight all the more horrifying, and sadly believable. It is a crime that the Academy failed to recognize the brilliance of her performance (or frankly any aspect of the film - its score, sound design, cinematography, direction, and supporting performances all should have gotten nominations the night— to add insult to injury, fucking Green Book won), since it is one of the greatest screen performances of the century, a performance that will be studied decades from now. This performance allows us to understand her deeply troubled, complex character, someone we don’t necessarily side with but always care about and believe. Alex Wolff is just as good as Peter, the last survivor of Paimon’s curse. Full stop - Hereditary is one of the greatest horror films of all time. Period. I’m so glad it has gotten the success it deserves, and I’m so glad a studio like A24 is willing to back such an unbridled, creative vision, and one of the most powerful films in its genre.