Horror comes home
Could Sundance hit Hereditary be 2018’s scariest movie?
DIRECTOR ARI ASTER calls his debut feature “a family film”. But — and we cannot stress this enough — do not take kids to see this. Or anyone without a cast-iron constitution. Because this “family film” is going to be the most talked-about horror movie of the year. Aster uses the term because
Hereditary is about family and the connections they share, emotionally and genetically, whether they like it or not. It centres on the Grahams. Annie Graham’s (Toni Collette) mother has recently died, which she and her family — husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff ) and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) — are taking oddly. As bizarre and terrifying things begin to happen, they discover more about their family line and realise being a Graham may actually be a curse. Premiering at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Hereditary was greeted with rave reviews and ruined underwear. At least two critics called it a “game-changer” and it currently sits at 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. “I worried people would hate it,” says Aster. “But by the second [Sundance screening], the atmosphere was beyond electric. People were so afraid of what was coming. It was maybe the best moment of my life.”
Aster has been picking at a fascination with bizarre family dynamics for years in his short films. 2011’s The Strange Thing
About The Johnsons is a bitten-tongue-in-bloody-cheek tale of a son who molests his own father. 2013’s Munchausen has a woman slowly poison her son to stop him leaving for college. “All my worst nightmares are about family, either something horrible happening to them or them turning against me,” says Aster.
The director is very honest about his reasons for making his debut in the horror genre. “I knew that horror films were easier to get made,” he says. “I wanted to make something that harkened back to the ’60s and ’70s ones I loved, like Don’t
Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby. Horror that grew from character.” The film he calls his key reference, though, is not horror at all. “The first thing I showed my department heads was Andrew Haigh’s 45
Years,” a film about a woman discovering a shocking (but not supernatural) secret from her husband’s past. “I see it as a very untraditional ghost story.”
If you’ve seen 45 Years, do not go into Hereditary expecting a similar, quietly haunting experience: there will be far more screaming.
HEREDITARY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 15 JUNE