Hereditary is a new horror film that has gotten a lot of positive buzz from festivals and critics. I saw the movie tonight and I think it’s a lot of overrated hooey for a movie that’s trying too hard and is accidentally funny when I think it’s trying to be serious.
Not that the movie doesn’t have some good points. If nothing else, there are dramatic and suspenseful character-driven scenes that are very well done. They elicit all the negative human emotions – anger, judgement, guilt, doubt, sadness, despair, etc. When the movie is about these emotions centered around loss and death of family members, it’s really quite good. It’s also not a hell of a lot of fun… this is some pretty grim stuff. Dialog and moments that are legitimately shocking.
So what this movie is about is a little deliberately vague (and misleading) in the trailers. A family – mom, dad, 16 year old son, 13 year old daughter – have just lost their emotionally unstable grandmother who was also suffering dementia. The film is partly about how they deal with that loss and also maybe a ghost story… or a demonic possession story… or who in hell knows. It might just be a movie about psychosis and emotional instability passed down through hereditary disease. Or not.
The first 30-40 minutes of the film does everything it can to make you feel uneasy with a deep, sobering bass-heavy soundtrack. It’s SO insistent that you feel uncomfortable, I kept asking, “Sure… but what on screen is supposed to be creepy that you are putting all this effort into the mood music?” That was the thing – the movie so obsessed over assuring the audience something is scary and off-kilter but it never delivers anything visually.
And then something truly jarring and shocking happens and the character it happens to has such a human reaction to it that the movie suddenly got a lot better. This moment has a character response so believable, I was shocked at how poor the actor delivered his scenes later in the movie. But, ignoring that, it’s one of those moments of disbelief and gradual realization for the character that you can imaging reacting in a similar way. Hopefully you would never have to.
This leads to the aforementioned scenes of human drama, frailty, and ugliness. This is, despite the fact its deeply bleak, the best part of the movie and if it had stuck to this story, we’d have a great film. An examination of self-doubt, blame, and other ugly emotions you might have towards your family under similar circumstances.
But, alas, the movie insists upon being the horror movie it was advertised to be. And the further it descends into these horror beats, the less interesting – and ultimately literally laughable – it gets. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t go with cheep jump scares… but maybe it could have used them. Instead, it just starts tossing random shit at the screen, assuming something in this mish-mash of horror tropes will scare you. None of it really makes sense, it’s just excused to scare the audience… allegedly.
The final 15 minutes of the film are quite laughable. And I mean that literally… some of the imagery and character decisions are so off in left-field, I had a hard time imagining this was still being a serious film. And I wasn’t the only one – there was laughter in the audience as well. Which is baffling that a film goes so off-base with horror tropes to suddenly get THIS misguided.
Eyes were rolled.
So… don’t believe the hype. This is an over-long, tedious film that I just wanted to end after a point. I give credit to some of the acting and some of the human drama mid-way through the film, but everything else was just bizarrely misguided. Skip.
Score: 71