AFTER years in the doldrums, the horror movie seems to making a bit of a comeback.
M Night Shyamalan returned to the genre last year with Split, there’s a new Halloween on the way and Get Out made an appearance at this year’s Oscars.
But Hereditary offers very different types of chills.
Toni Collette plays Annie Graham, a deeply troubled artist who constructs miniature models of buildings in her attic.
Her elderly mother has just died in the upstairs bedroom, leaving a collection of strange books about the spirit world.
In her powerful speech at a support group, Annie reveals a family history of mental illness.
The old lady appears to have had a very negative effect on Annie’s family.
When her daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) sees a THE HAPPY PRINCE (15)
IT took Rupert Everett a decade to bring his Oscar Wilde movie to the cinemas.
Thankfully, all that hustling has paid off. His ambitious biopic is a beautifully shot, smartly written and wonderfully performed tale of the writer’s final years.
Everett frames his drama with Wilde’s story, which he tells via flashback to his own children in London and to two urchins pigeon crash into her classroom window, she nips out and snips its head off with a pair of scissors.
She adds it to a weird collection of totems she seems to be amassing.
Then she appears to see granny alive and well, and we wonder whether this is a manifestation of the spirit world or the old family curse of mental illness.
When Annie starts contacting the other side, her laid-back husband (Gabriel Byrne) suspects his wife has finally descended into total madness.
To say any more, would spoil the fun. But after the first shock (and it’s one of the grimmest scenes I’ve ever seen in a horror movie), the slow build-up begins to pay off.
If we had not become so invested in these characters, the second half of the film would appear laughably over the top, but here the supernatural feels so horribly real. in Paris, where he has fled after a two-year sentence for “gross indecency with men”.
We see him bickering with lover Bosie – an excellent Colin Morgan, left with Everett – and a touching scene of him reunited with friends in Belgium.
You can feel Everett’s passion in his brilliant performance. I just wish he’d spent more time creating an emotional bond with his audience, but Everett’s camera is frustratingly restless.