Review of Hereditary (2018) by Angryshark92 — 08 Sep 2018

Hereditary has some good acting and a decent story, but it does not break ground or do anything new for the genre, and with an exceptionally long run time and poor plot pacing and development, this "horror" flick falls flat on its face.

There isn't much to say outside of my initial summary, this movie had some good acting, some intriguing plot points, and a decent mystery, but I struggle to see how this is being praised the way it is. Hereditary focuses on a family who loses their estranged matriarch, which leads to the grieving family experiencing strange occurrences and haunting scenarios which can only be explained by unravelling the mysterious dark history of their lost loved one. Sound original? Not really, nothing too special here.

The plot is interesting at some points, and it is interesting to see how they were able to weave it all together in the final third, but the outlying problem is that it took way too long to get there. There were way too many irrelevant scenes that contributed little to nothing to the plot as a whole, and this caused the movie to drag on through the first two acts. I found myself itching to grab my phone and browse other movies I could watch multiple times because I was absolutely bored out of my mind. I can also barely classify this as a horror film until the last 10-15 minutes of the film when things start to actually pull together and the whole purpose of the movie is finally revealed. Unfortunately, to me, it was not worth the long wait, it started to become obvious and somewhat contrived going into the final act. I never got the feeling of being genuinely terrified or worried for any of the characters because the danger was never really present, on top of this the atmosphere was not really well built, which is absolutely imperative for a horror/thriller to impress. The soundtrack was acceptable, but nothing amazing to build immersion, kind of reminded me of The Shining a bit.

Toni Collette did an a pretty good job of portraying her character, she was the most convincing actor in the entire film. Gabriel Byrne, on the other hand, was incredibly disappointing, somewhat because he wasn't involved all that much and his character was bland and underdeveloped... every other character was either acceptable or just "there" as they did not contribute much.

This film could have been about an hour and twenty minutes and might have been a lot better if they were able to delve into the grandmother's mysterious past a lot sooner because those were the only parts that were able to keep my attention. Trying to put the pieces together before the movie does is most of the fun in a mystery film, when it keeps you guessing, you become entertained, but there was way too much subplot that was getting in the way and destroying the pace of the film. It ruined the entire experience for me.

+ Toni Collette's acting.

+ Matriarch's mystery is intriguing, at first.

+ Final third is decent.

- Absolutely abysmal pacing.

- Not a horror film in my opinion.

- Way too much subplot.

- Unnecessary character development.

- Poor writing and plot climax.

- "Disturbing scenes" are lacklustre.

- All other actors are subpar, at best.

- Massively overrated, for what reason?

Overall, this movie could have had something interesting on its hands, the initial premise was great, and the story setup from the beginning was good, but the awful pacing, subpar horror/mystery/thriller elements, lack of creepy atmosphere, wasted time, and forced unoriginal ending, make this movie a failure in the eyes of the horror genre. Unfortunately, again, I must mention that critics are really getting it wrong in the entertainment industry right now, 87 is way too high, the only reason I can think of them giving off this rating is simply because they have not seen many horror movies before to notice all unoriginal elements that are present in this film. This movie is a 25 for me.