Review of Hereditary (2018) by Guy S — 12 Jun 2018

Let me start off by saying that Toni Collette was excellent. Also, many parts of the movie were shot in intriguing ways; the visuals were always just so. This does not make the movie worth paying money for.

Hereditary is trying very hard to tell you that it is a smart movie, but it is not very smart or interesting.

The preview sold the movie as psychological horror, the kind of thing where the messiness of the horror situation opens up some hidden element of the human psyche. The tragedy that happens about 30 minutes in really hit home, because I thought I was watching a movie that cared about its characters, and that their emotional journey would say something interesting about the family, or about mourning, or about the human condition.

But then, as the supernatural elements piled up, whatever emotional insight the movie had produced started to just slip out of its fingers. It didn't help that the mythology didn't stick together, wasn't new or interesting, and wasn't even that consistent (are there ghosts? I honestly have no clue!). What's more, the mythology didn't seem to shed any sort of insight on the emotions the characters were dealing with--once you figure out what's going on, the whole story just feels like a waste.

I left the theater feeling disappointed and a little used--by pulling me in with the family drama and compelling visuals of the first half of the movie, it made me invest way too much in the canned and uninspired darkness of the rest of it. I strongly recommend avoiding this.