Hereditary

After a grieving family has yet another tragic loss, their lives’ begin to unravel the cryptic secrets of their family lineage.  This movie feels like psychological warfare, but it’s also a cinematography masterclass on how to create suspense. It’s so scary yet so disturbing and doesn’t need to rely on jumpscares. I’d put this on the same level of horror and suspense as Get Out: just really wow. The camera work has such a unique stamp to it and it’s so incredibly effective. The long pauses specifically on Peter’s (Alex Wolff) face before the full 180 degree turns to see his view point are rather terrifying. Not to mention how the camera almost takes a second to adjust in a dark room like your eyes would. The slow fades are really effective in conveying emotions of the characters. Camera placement and panning is really effective in being creepy. The use of the diorama intermittently, but not consistently for transitions creates unease really well. The lighting is so dark, but never prevents visibility. Every doorway in this movie looks lethal because of the darkness. The sound effects crescendoing is so daunting and scary.  Mind you I’m a wuss when it comes to horror movies, but this goes up there for one of the scariest for me. The dead grandmother in the darkness, Peter’s reflection smiling back at him in the bookcase glass, dropping focus from Peter’s face to Annie (Toni Collette) in the corner of the ceiling to smiling in the dark door frame. This is a movie that you’ll think about while you’re trying to sleep for months to come.  Not only is the cinematography great, but the depth of character and complexity of relationships is so well fleshed out for the run time for a stand alone movie. Like why would Peter ever just let his mother open up the car door to find his decapitated sister, why would he not say anything, then he starts to resent her for his decisions, and then they proceed to just tear each other apart of the remainder of the film. I will say that despite Annie having a point, that has to be some of the worst verbal child abuse that I’ve ever seen in a film. One thing that did confuse me was the interaction of the characters’ ages (Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne look like they could be father and daughter).  It’s almost surprising how well casted and how great the acting is given this is a horror movie. Toni Colette is so good: recovery monologue, Charlie possessing her, etc. Many people praise her performance as the best in horror of all time. Her not being nominated for an award is absolutely bananas. Her portrayal of grief and pain is so realistic that I honestly expected her character to not be able to take it anymore basically every scene that she was in. There’s so many horrible things in her life that everytime a new shitty thing happens it’s like cmon now.  A take on reddit that I liked is that, “this movie does a great job of showing the weight of events that are out of your control and the title itself alludes to that; you can’t control your genetics.” A supernatural element feels kinda cheap for how good this movie has been, but I think the cult component permits it. Also, Charlie just biting straight into a Hershey’s chocolate bar is a power move.  This Reddit post has great insight and summation regarding the ending: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/f45uk1/hereditary_ending_question_spoilers/ Quotes: “Because nobody admits anything that they’ve done” tongue cluck “All I get is that fucking face on your face!”