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Hereditary is Scary and Good

Hereditary, at its best moments, is chilling. It makes you feel cold inside, and it’s worthy of a ticket purchase for that horrifically unpleasant sensation alone. It’s imperfect. Sometimes, it gets stuck awkwardly between self-aware camp and progressive art-shock. It’s scary. Comparisons to the greats of the genre are inevitable. Hereditary welcomes them, and at its lower points embrace them a tad overzealously.


But when the film is at its best, it’s shocking on its own terms. First time writer-director Avi Aster has a demented vision that results in what might be the most shocking, sustained, ten-plus-minute-stretch of sheer, cold-blooded horror that I’ve ever seen in a film. It comes early, though, and the holistic product isn’t as shocking, nor as innovative, nor as frightening, nor as capable of leaving a lasting impression, as those utterly bone-chilling ten-ish-minutes. But the surrounding film is so handily constructed - superbly acted, visually entrancing, and well-paced - that the early peak doesn’t bring down the ship.

My girlfriend calls it the scariest film she has ever seen, and I do not blame her whatsoever for bestowing to it this moniker. Its disappointingly formulaic ending, which pays overly-obvious homage to a superior genre film (to the extent that just mentioning which film would serve as a non-trivial spoiler to anyone familiar with it), dulls the impact when the credits roll. But the visceral shocks that the film offers, its innovative panache, and its sheer, fucked-up vision should ensure it a place, alongside the likes of The Exorcist, as a film capable of terrifying its contemporary audiences thanks to its audacity and newness, but that will likely not age into the status of a true horror masterpiece.

Still, look for more from Aster. He’s got some nasty tricks up his sleeve.

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