NEXT GENERATION

ARI ASTER returns to the theme of family rituals with devilish invention in his bonechilling feature debut.

The movie opens with an obit for 78-year-old Ellen Taper Leigh, and to say that grandma doesn’t exactly rest in peace is an epic understatement.

But Hereditary takes the core haunting element of a spirit with a malevolent agenda and runs with it in a seemingly endless series of unexpected directions over two breathless hours of escalating terror that never slacken for a minute.

Arguably the most effective domestic horror chiller since The Conjuring and The Babadook, this A24 release should hit discerning genre fans right where they live.

Aster’s ability to modernise, his obvious reverence for the expert mood modulation, visual command and layered characterisations that defined sophisticated horror of the 1960s and 1970s catapults the writerdirector into the vanguard of contemporary horror auteurs.

The film’s superb cast, led by an astonishingly good Toni Collette, represents another strong draw for this movie.

In her eulogy at Ellen’s funeral, Annie declares her love for her mother but openly acknowledges that she was a difficult woman, private and secretive.

She checks in on her eldest teenager Peter (Alex Wolff), an easygoing stoner, to see if the funeral upset him and gets an untroubled smile in response.

Only Charlie, a brooding 13-year-old with a rat’s nest of hair and a sketchpad full of angry drawings (even her bunnies and chickens look evil) seems genuinely disturbed by grandma’s passing.

We learn about grandma’s dark side when Annie spills details of her psychotically depressed father’s suicide by starvation.

In addition, her schizophrenic older brother hanging himself, leaving a note accusing their mother of “putting people inside him”.

What makes the movie so satisfying is that while it turns steadily into a batsh*t-crazy collision of the supernatural and the classically mythological, the family dynamic remains firmly in play. – Hollywood Reporter