Review of Hereditary (2018) by Blackstag1710 — 19 Nov 2018

I read a lot of the favorable reviews for Hereditary, so I went into watching it with quite a few expectations.

However, I sadly have to say that it failed miserably at being what it promised to be: a great horror movie.

The movie begins slow, and really only picks up pace in the last 20 minutes or so (which is not necessarily a bad thing). However, the movie puts into place so many pieces that ultimately don't come into play, or are at least redundant, that I got the impression that the movie aspires to be more than it actually is, and thus fails in the grand scheme of things that make a horror movie scary.

I've read reviews for this movie that said that they couldn't sleep for weeks after watching it, that the movie gave them a lingering feel of dread etc., you know the drill. Reading this stuff really makes me wonder whether I'm too jaded after watching one too many horror movies, since there was no sense of dread, at all, and there was only one scary scene, and that's already being generous.

So, to conclude, it's not like Hereditary is the worst movie I've ever seen, far from it, it's well acted, has a nice sound design, great production value, but it's just not a horror flick. I don't even know what it's really supposed to be, maybe a drama with supernatural influence, but it certainly isn't scary, and it's a shame, since the background and world sound quite interesting, but ultimately fail to deliver.