Hereditary

“Why are you scared of me?**” Evil, evil film. Have put off watching it ever again for the foreseeable future for some time for the very specific reason that it is one of the tiny handful of horror films to genuinely terrify me. Doesn’t quite top that list (original Blair Witch will always make my blood run cold) but I really don’t know if I can think of another work that just makes my stomach churn and thrash like it’s being pulled into ribbons. At surface level, it might be kind of a shock that Ari Aster has gone on to be one of the more polarizing figureheads in our present cinematic landscape but when you go back and really look at this (one of the most seismic debuts of the decade in terms of sheer ripple effect, surely) it’s abundantly and agonizingly clear that he is so singularly and uncompromising in his artistic pursuits. Watching Hereditary, I became almost distressingly aware of each and every little thing about the film that would enthrall one person and disgust another. That this made such an impact like it did and became a genuine, stone cold, mainstream modern classic of the genre is sort of an astonishing lightning in the bottle cultural moment. Don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that A24 as an entity owes a lot of its current prestige and pop cultural status to what Aster achieved here. Hadn’t rewatched a frame of this in almost four years so a large amount of it just hit me anew in tidal waves. Of course, there are very specific moments that you never forget. Even if maybe you’d like to. But they’re still as harrowing and horrifying in that casualness now as they’ve ever been. The big scene that really throws you out of whatever track you may have thought you were on is the one that everybody always talks about and comes away screaming about, but the defining image and sound of Hereditary for me has always been Peter crying out, “Mommy, please, stop!” if only because that encapsulates everything about the film’s spirit to me. It captures humans as such broken, wounded creatures whenever they’re grieving. There is nothing romantic or Hollywood about the emotions, whether it be the sadness or the terror, present here. Toni Collette (in one of the best performances I’ve ever seen) makes some of the ugliest faces when she’s absolutely at her tipping point. Jaw slacked and eyes wide with despair or agony. Oftentimes, both at once. A lot has been written about how the Academy likes to shut out horror, and I have conflicting feelings about whether or not this is actually the case but even I have to acknowledge that it usually has to have some sort of prestige behind it to really get taken seriously as a nominating prospect. Which is what makes Collette’s omission from the Best Actress race all the more infuriating and baffling. Her performance is so insanely layered with all of these debilitatingly horrible traumas compacting on top of one another, all these gruesome emotions spilling out. So much of this film existed in a vague fog to me that I felt like was unraveling right alongside her. Had essentially completely forgotten how the grandmother hangs over the entire picture like this bad omen, and those photographs in the boxes of her stuff especially genuinely unnerved me. Alex Wolff is also just absurdly wonderful here. He has a way of producing tears that makes them look like absolute agony. Some of the horrible things Peter stares directly in the face and gets broken by are astonishing in their cruelty, and they’re almost completely to do with his mother. That scene in his bedroom with her “confession” before they burn is just brutal in its depiction of a lifetime of horror and tragedy that has followed this woman into motherhood. Pawel Pogorzelski‘s photography is some of the more iconic imagery in modern horror. So much of this has already been burned into the annals of cinema history in its short lifespan. That house starts to feel so isolating and haunted and empty as bodies start to pile up. It’s shot and lit so intimately and warmly but it’s imbued with this sense of horrific grief and repressed rage. The family leaves and returns to it intermittently all throughout the entire runtime and each time you get that sense of dread whenever they emerge into the driveway. Effortlessly captures the feeling you get deep in the pit of your chest when home is no longer a safe space. How can you hope to escape from the wolves biting at your ankles if you live in the nest? Aster’s scare tactics and trickery are so understated and calm. There is nothing here that I would really call a proper “jump scare” but he does thoroughly manage to startle and disturb you. You’ll see some of the most ghastly, ghoulish images presented to you in plain sight. The film waits for your eyes to find it and that’s where the scare comes in. One that I didn’t catch the first time around: that man with a wolf like grin behind Charlie at her grandmother’s funeral. Peter climbing out of his bed at the kickoff point of the third act, while his mother lingers above him, is a horrifying scare that I’ll remember forever. Aster displays an alarming amount of wisdom at the helm of the ship. If ever there was a film that had every excuse or opportunity to alarm you with cheap, loud noises. Here, the horror is presented as something inevitable and deeply rooted into the DNA of this broken family. As the narrative unravels and reveals all of its tricks to you, there is this deeply predatory feeling that arises with each twist and turn. Very little is more frightening to me as a concept for a horror story to me than an outside force, that has actually been on the inside the whole time, systematically picking apart something at its mercy. I will never forget Toni Collette’s trembling voice when she begs her husband to believe her, that they’ve made a pact with “something”. And that the bridge to that pact was built by someone who appeared to her in the night with the gentle voice and touch of a friend, of empathy and compassion. Those closing moments are truly, truly haunting. Evil wins, unambiguously, in Ari Aster’s world. And it’s an evil that’s been picking this family apart for an entire generation. Annie’s brother almost certainly wasn’t a schizophrenic. Her father probably didn’t starve to death. The horrific, ugly face of her childhood and early adulthood has shaped her in ways that we see throughout the entire film. She can be unflinchingly cruel. Her relationship with grief and pain can be so harmful to those around her. Molded by a lifetime of tragedy and fractured relationships. Every horrible secret, every crippling loss has been swarming her and hers forever. She’s been fighting something she didn’t even know was in front of her. And it still ended in fire and blood. “I never wanted to be your mother.”