When it comes to horror movies I usually laugh it off and continue my day but this film took a small emotional toll on me. Even putting me on the verge of tears.  I entered the theater expecting another exorcism movie but left confused and drained.

This movie is about the family of Anne Graham, a specialist on miniature figures that lives with her husband, Steve and their two children; Peter and Charlie. Tragedy strikes when her mother, Ellen dies. They held a funeral for her and that’s when supernatural and unsettling things start to happen to this grieving family.

The films shine in many ways. For starters the cinematography it’s impeccable. Just by the opening scene alone gives you the feeling that this is going to be a cinematographic experience. To accompany this experience and make the scenes even more unsettling than it already was; they gave us a flawless execution of sound editing. We can’t talk about this movie with ought the amazing performance of Toni Collette. She truly outshined the other actors and stoles the show. What even I and many others considered an Oscar-worthy performance.

Even if the movie Hereditary has many good attributes to it, there are always bad ones to accompany it. The movie is 1 hour and 27 minutes long; the first half of the movie was a total slow-burner and it made me and other people on the theater question what this movie was even about. The plot of the film was revealed at the end of the second act. But, even if it was a little dreadful sitting down the first 90 minutes of the movie with ought knowing what was going on; it was building up all the tension to give us the audience an unsettling beautiful mess.

Hereditary is not your typical horror movie. Being Ari Aster’s first feature film, he knows the equation on how to make a good horror movie. This film doesn’t use what we see in a normal horror scene; that is jumps scares or loud and obnoxious noises. Rather, disturbing and unsettling imagery to set the mood. What makes this film scary is not the small supernatural elements to it but rather how real the situation of the grieving family is ; dealing with death, mental illness and family problems. Fear is subjective to the viewers, and not everyone will find this movie scary. This is a film that horror junkie like myself appreciates seeing in the big screen. Hereditary is an example of how psychological horrors should be.

I give this movie 4 / 5 tears of fear.

 

Trailer for Hereditary : 

 

{ Picture by https://giphy.com/a24/  }

{ trailer by https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuPivVjnfNo4mb3Oog_frZg }