Brilliant, scary ride to a vague destination
CREEPY, creepy, creepy. Writerdirector Ari Aster makes an unnerving debut with Hereditary, a meticulously-crafted horror thriller starring Toni Collette.
As Annie, the harried, confused artist at the centre of this domestic dystopia,
Collette delivers the most all-in performance of her recent career.
Benefiting from equally assured turns from Gabriel Byrne as Annie’s impassive husband, Steve, and young actors Alex
Wolff and Milly Shapiro as their kids, Peter and Charlie, Hereditary elaborates on the familiar theme of haunted houses and cursed families with precision and imagination – at least until its chaotic endgame. At that point, the allusions Aster has built up disintegrate into graphic gore and on-the-nose literalism.
Hereditary begins with the funeral of Annie’s mother, described in her daughter’s eulogy as one prone to “secret rituals” and emotional withholding.
Upon returning to their gorgeous home, Annie, Steve and their children disperse and atomise, with Annie retreating to her studio to work on her dollhouse-like art installations.
Those miniaturised versions of her life are Annie’s way of processing grief, ambivalence and profound losses she can’t name.
Despite her family’s obvious prosperity, all is not well. Charlie, who is given to making disturbing sculptures, seems to have withdrawn into her own world. Meanwhile, Peter focuses on getting stoned in his bedroom.
Hereditary is punctuated midway through by an event that is shocking, both in and of itself and also in its aftermath.
But even as the core story goes crazily off the rails, Aster evinces a fine eye for detail, his carefully constructed environments echoing Annie’s own tableaus.
Although the film is most notably a showcase for Collette, who calibrates Annie’s unease and rising hysteria with the steady accuracy of a surgeon, Wolff and Shapiro deserve praise for depictions of adolescent angst that feel both lived-in and otherworldly.
The movie draws immediate comparisons to the everyday surrealism and psychological dread of Roman Polanski and David Lynch, while forging its own weird aesthetic path.
Hereditary is staged, photographed and acted so brilliantly, and brings up issues of motherhood, resentment and creativity with such subtlety, that it’s tempting to overlook its laughable excesses. For a while, this movie is going places, even if the final destination isn’t nearly as fascinating as the journey. – Washington Post