Hereditary (2018)

I've heard a lot about Ari Aster's 2018 smash debut, Hereditary. It's been hailed as a masterpiece. It shocked audiences. It built a word-of-mouth campaign of success at the box office, despite being an independent horror art film. I missed it when it came through my local theaters. I held off watching it on streaming platforms. I am not sure why. I wasn't sure I wanted to take the leap, yet. Maybe I wanted to hype to die. So as to afford myself a level reaction when I did finally see it.

But then the trailer for Midsommar (2019) dropped. And then the Rotten Tomatoes reviews began to trickle in.

Ari Aster appears to be the horror auteur of our time.

So, after noticing Hereditary streaming on Amazon Prime, I decided to sit down on a summer day, in advance of heading to the theaters this weekend to see Midsommar, and check out the film that started all of the hubbub in the first place.

I sat down with Hereditary.

I. What Is It?

This is the story of Annie Graham and her family. It is the story of their grief, their madness, and their fate. To say more would spoil your viewing.

II. Beautifully Composed

Whatever your opinion of this film, you cannot deny its craft. The shot comp is incredible from the first frame to the last. Pawel Pogorzelski's photography is balanced, labored, and artful. You could take stills from this movie and appreciate them as fine art. The distance shots imitate the feeling of looking into one of Annie's dollhouses, and the camera pushes, slowly, inward to invite us into the emotional space of the scene. The long, slow pushes and glides make the film feel dreamy.

This is a dark film, but it isn't muddy. The colors are rich, and sumptuous, even in their darkness. The yellows and blues and reds and oranges pop with vivid life, unlike so many horror movies that get drenched in perma-blue post production filters. Aster's world is cool when it needs to be, and violently vibrant, too.

The score masterfully builds tension throughout, telling the story of what the characters see when the camera refuses to show us.

This is a story, on its face, that can be told simply and straightforwardly. But the craft involved rockets it into the stratosphere.

III. Toni Collette: Robbed Queen

Everyone in this film is pulling their weight. Gabriel Byrne turns in a solid, grounded performance. Alex Wolff is strong, and committed to the emotional range and intensity of his role. Milly Shapiro is delightfully creepy.

But Toni Collette is the goddamned star.

Her performance is raw, and runs the gamut of human emotion from tip to tail. She plays Annie's devastation with profound boldness, and shows us the slow descent into madness with nimble skill. Aster's script is good enough, but Collette's performance imbues the story with real pathos. It is the kind of performance one expects from a prestige drama, not a genre flick. It elevates an already finely crafted film to infinity and beyond.

Hers was probably the best performance of 2018, and the fact that she didn't even get a nomination at the Academy Awards is a tragedy.

IV. Complex; Read it However You'd Like

This section will contain spoilers for the movie: you've been warned

*     *      * Spoiler Barrier *     *     *

This film can be read from two perspectives: either everything that happens is supernaturally derived, or the entire film is part of Annie's psychosis. The film drops in plenty of hints and clues to justify that the devils in the shadows are, in fact, real, but there is a great deal of fun to be had interpreting the film as a psychological horrorshow.

The best thing is that the film works both ways. It works as a spine-tingling supernatural spookfest, with a deeply creepy lore. It also works as a meditation on grief, and trauma, and how mental illness is passed on to those around us. Annie's madness, indeed the madness of her mother Ellen, is inflicted on her entire family. It is hereditary. Not in the sense that it is in her genes, but in the sense that her actions have very real, deadly consequences for the people around her. Steve is a man at the boundaries of his love and patience; Peter self-medicates with drugs and slogs through life like a zombie; Charley is a strange little girl who finds comfort in her sketchbook and the dolls she constructs out of detritus.

In one scene, Peter's (Alex Wolff) teacher is discussing the Greek tragedy of Oedipus. He asks the class whether the story is more tragic because the characters had no choice in their fate, or if the cruel puppetry of destiny is meant to ease the audience's sense of gloom. It is an interesting discussion, for sure, and one that can be had about Hereditary, as well. 

Are the deaths of the entire Graham family to be rued as the actions of a mad woman, or the machinations of a literal god of Hell? Does it make a difference who was pulling the strings? Aster layers both into his story. In this way, Aster is commenting on the nature of storytelling, and inviting us to investigate our feelings about what we've just watched. Have the Grahams been sacrificed on a satanic alter, or the alter of our, the audience's, pleasure? After all, part of the sick pleasure people derive from horror movies is the destruction of the people onscreen. Are the Grahams so many dolls in an elaborately constructed miniature world for us to peer into and exit from at will?

When was the last time a horror film asked you to consider something so existential?

V. Slow Burn

The movie tip toes through its first two acts, but sets the whole thing on fire in its third. At 127 minutes, the film isn't too long by any stretch, but it does take time to get rolling. Once rolling, though, whoo boy. If you revel in the slow burn, this film is for you. If you dislike patient-minded thrillers that meticulously lay out piece after piece after piece, this may irritate you.

But, like I said: the last act of this movie is bonkers, and I think Aster earns the insanity by being patient throughout the first portion of the film's runtime.

V. Old Fashioned Scares

Is this movie gory? Yes, but celebratively or cartoonishly so. Does this film feature jump scares? Yes, but it deploys them at just the right moments and refuses to go to the well too often. Aster allows the scares to exist and be discovered, right before they are triggered on screen. This lends the film a genuine sense of terror and made me actually uneasy while I watched it.

Even the supernatural elements are lowkey. The film resolutely refuses to show us Paimon or any literal devil. Instead we are left with an interesting trick of light that is meant to suggest his presence. This allows the film to be appreciated, as I mentioned earlier, from multiple perspectives.

It also doesn't ruin its own mystique by concocting ridiculous CG creatures or questionably animated sequences.

The horror is simple, and effective. Just like I like it.

Why You Should See It

- It's a beautifully composed intersection of art film and genre film.
- It will challenge you to think about it after you walk away.
- It features a powerhouse performance from one of the most underrated actors of our time, Toni Collette.

Why You Shouldn't See It

- It features violent deaths and does not shrug away from the ugliness of that violence
- It feels a bit long getting to its fireworks display in the third act.

In Conclusion

Hereditary marks the beginning of an auteur's career. Ari Aster comes out the gate swinging with a complex, old school horrorshow that works both as a family drama and a genre flick. He imbues his thrills with a taste for artfulness, which makes his movie as pretty to watch as it is disturbing to contemplate. Is this a masterpiece? Is he a genius? Time will tell, but, for the nonce, go ahead and consider this essential viewing for the horror faithful, and a compelling pitstop for those who enjoy a dash of complexity with their scares.

Miscellany

- Toni Collette had told her agent that she didn't want to do any more "dark" films. She wanted to stick to comedies and lighter material. But when she read the script for Hereditary, she couldn't say no.
- Alex Wolff (Peter) and Milly Shapiro (Charley) would go out and eat together in preparation for their roles. She would sit in absolute silence, and he would spend those hours trying to get her to talk.
- The movie was filmed in Utah.
- The interior of the Graham house was built on a soundstage: Aster wanted the walls removable so he could shoot in such a way that evoked looking into a dollhouse.
- This movie was filmed in 32 days.
- Aster was committed to practical effects whenever possible. The production team, to that end, had to teach themselves how to do certain difficult effects like how to get a candle to light itself, and how to move chalk across a chalkboard with tiny magnets.
- The production designer stated that she studied the occult in preparation for this movie. She wanted to incorporate "sacred geometry" into the set designs. Annie, Peter and Charley are represented by triangles; Steve is represented by squares; Ellen is represented with circles. You can find these shapes all over the Graham house's walls and floors.
- When a movie opens, its audience members are polled after viewing; that data becomes a film's Cinema Score. Movies are rated from F to A+. A Cinema Score will often reflect a film's popularity. Hereditary was given a Cinema Score of D+. It would ultimately go on to gross a worldwide box office take of $79 million on a budget of about $9 million.