Hereditary (2018)

[Mal12345]

Time to post another thread that nobody will care about.

I watched Hereditary yesterday with my wife in the new movie theater in town. The theater has rocking chairs and recliners. I'm not sure why they installed rocking chairs, maybe for the old grannies who like to go out to the movies once in a while.

So far the movie is holding at 8.1/10 stars on IMDB.com. My wife was expecting a horror movie, but it was more of a ghost or supernatural story. She didn't understand it, although she doesn't go to movies in order to be challenged. I was able to add things up although so many parts of the movie were left without explanation so that I can only guess, without looking up the storyline, that a demonic ritual was involved. I just don't see how some of it came to be, for example, I need an explanation as to how the dead grandma ended up in the attic. The entrance to the attic has a drop down ladder which is practically straight up and down, and hauling a corpse up that sort of contraption would be highly difficult.

So while I was able to splice together parts of the movie to make it into a comprehensible whole, some parts of it were not explainable without, perhaps, a supernatural explanation. Or maybe the movie creators just decided the audience would have to suspend disbelief, even granted the fact that it is already susceptible to that as being part of a genre of unproveable ideas.

There was some nudity in the movie, but it was of a rather unpleasant type - such as the ghost of grandma appearing in a full-frontal nudity shot - thankfully the view was rather darkened so I didn't have to burn my eyes out with red hot pokers.

I didn't expect the ending, so that was as good thing. It tied up all the loose ends in a rather sudden way. There were clues left throughout the movie, such as the scene of a book called "Spiritualism" in which is highlighted a paragraph about a demon who needs to inhabit a young male body.

There is a stylish symbol that appears throughout, the first appearance of which I believe was on the back of a telephone pole. But this pole was destined to play an important role in the movie, so that would explain it. It's some kind of demonic symbol which, I believe, also serves as a family crest of sorts (the movie is called Hereditary for a very good reason).

The statement early on that there is a history of mental illness on the mother's side of the family was also a clue - the supernatural is often considered the playground of the mentally ill who hallucinate or create intense ideations about God, demons, angels, and the like.

I don't know if I liked the movie, but I thought Annie was a bit much on the homely side, reminiscent of Shelly Duvall in The Shining, a movie which may carry a similar theme. Not that they look alike at all, but for the homeliness element. And at the end I was left feeling kind of depressed about the overall movie. So given my overall reactions, both objective and subjective, I would give it about 5/10 stars.

 

[Totenkindly]

I saw it on Saturday and will give a better review later.

I rank it on a 4.5/5 in artistry, acting, and ambiance, but that's with the caveat that horror movies are all different. If you're into The Witch, Rosemary's Baby, It Comes at Night, and similar style films, this is right up your alley. If you are into other subgenres of horror or are mostly into jump scares that resolve with good triumphing over evil, your mileage will vary.

I'm not really surprised that it hit so well with critics but tanked with CinemaScore -- it's actually a "feel bad" movie in terms of the overall ambiance and dread evoked as it relentlessly pushes through to its final conclusion (although I found the last few minutes probably the weakest part). It won't be a mainstream hit. The thing is, it's the kind of film that will preserved in Criterion Collection or something similar long after horror movies that made more money off the general audience will vanish from memory.

I think this is the problem with marketing. They are marketing it as more mainstream to make more money, but there's going to be backlash from the surprised mainstream that this isn't really their kind of "popcorn horror flick."

 

[Mal12345]

I wasn't disappointed in the movie. My wife was disappointed that it wasn't a standard horror flick. She's been disappointed twice in a row now. IT didn't live up to the credo that horror movies should scare people in the audience.

I just don't like feeling glum at the end of a movie which I spent $10 to see and took up precious hours of whatever remaining life I have in me.

 

[Mal12345]

Toni Collette looks chronically like someone who just got out of bed.

 

[Totenkindly]

I wasn't disappointed in the movie. My wife was disappointed that it wasn't a standard horror flick. She's been disappointed twice in a row now. IT didn't live up to the credo that horror movies should scare people in the audience.

After the first viewing where I was just happy they didn't totally butcher it, I found myself more disappointed on later viewings. I think they were mostly related to pacing and/or cut material problems... and changing the end of the kid's portion with how the deadlights worked, well, Pennywise seemed kind of flat and non-frightening despite a few really good earlier sequences. To borrow an image, the film was really like a balloon that was slowly deflating.

I'm kind of indifferent to the thought of Part 2. Esp with Chastain cast as Bev. I think she's a great actress, but not for that role. She's too detached / TJ like.

I just don't like feeling glum at the end of a movie which I spent $10 to see and took up precious hours of whatever remaining life I have in me.

Yeah, it's highly variable based on the viewer. I think the director did what he wanted to do with it and it was artfully done, but... well, I know I like heavy crazy psychologically devastating movies... stuff that I 'feel intensely' regardless. (I've seen some pretty crazy stuff in terms of the horror I have watched. Have you ever seen the French movie Inside? Dear god...) The emotional reactions also felt authentic. I also know it might NOT be what other viewers want to see and/or walk away with, after. So marketing it to mainstream seems a mistake...

After the incident with the car, there's just that one scene where the camera focused on a face for quite a long time. It was so superbly done / acted, and a lot of this movie involves shots where there's a lot of space/silence utilized. This is what the film needed to do, to drive the audience a bit mad by letting those emotions have time to bounce around, until you're just begging to be "released" from the moment... yet the film is unmerciful.

I love Ann Down in general. And she nails all her scenes here. However, unfortunately, seeing her raises questions about what's happening in the film (because of how she can be typecast); iow, it breaks the wall and makes you "meta" what is going on, unfortunately. In general, the film was pretty super with confusing the issue of whether what we were seeing came from psychotic breaks by one of the characters or whether the origin was supernatural. I love that shit. It's probably why I was a little disappointed in the ending, it felt a little too mundane / easy. Still effective, but not as ambiguous and thus unsettling. Still, that interplay about what exactly is "hereditary" is a strength of the film. There's dark secrets that drive our behavior, some of which come out in this film. The dream sequences were pretty brutal.

Another thing i liked about the film is how it utilized things that could be described as tropes but often did so in ways that made them non-tropey. They were just handled differently... they seemed to fit with what was unfolding rather than being gimmicky or they happened at truly unexpected moments (rather than the predictably unpredictable moment). I also have to say that the film went in a very different direction than I expected, about 30 minutes in. I had no clue where it was going after that event. Which I thought was cool, but damn... My mind was just full of static, as in "uh, now what?"

I have loved Toni Colette ever since her fierce mama bear (before that become a trope) in The Sixth Sense. It was a positive ESFJ portrayal on screen. But she's done so much crazy stuff over the years, and after doing the States of Tara or whatever, this movie was old hat for her really. But yeah, she usually looks like she hasn't slept very much.

 

[Tomb1]

I thought the ending sucked.

 

[Wunjo]

It was sublime. Beautiful cinematography, mixed with a constant presence of the fear of the unknown, good scenario and fascinating acting. I don't really like standard horror movies, so; slow-boiling anxious terrors such as Hereditary immediately appeal to me. I loved the long-pace of the film; and was fascinated by the tremendous amounts of anxiety and abjection it ushered to the cinema. It was an instant classic for me; reminding me the films of Yorgos Lanthimos.

The VVitch is also a great movie, somewhat similar to Hereditary, regarding the elements that I have touched on.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Toni Collette looks chronically like someone who just got out of bed.

All Aussies are redneck surfers. This is a scientific fact.

 

[Totenkindly]

It was sublime. Beautiful cinematography, mixed with a constant presence of the fear of the unknown, good scenario and fascinating acting. I don't really like standard horror movies, so; slow-boiling anxious terrors such as Hereditary immediately appeal to me. I loved the long-pace of the film; and was fascinated by the tremendous amounts of anxiety and abjection it ushered to the cinema. It was an instant classic for me; reminding me the films of Yorgos Lanthimos.

The VVitch is also a great movie, somewhat similar to Hereditary, regarding the elements that I have touched on.

They are both films that rely on pervasive building dread, rather than gimmicky jump scares necessarily. (They're among my favorite horror films.)