Review of Hereditary (2018) by Gregory A — 12 Jun 2018

I'm notoriously hard to please when it comes to horror, and the closest recent film that came close to giving me what I look for is The Witch. With all of its flaws, The Witch left me unsettled, and the experience in the theater was almost fully satisfying.

Hereditary far exceeded this expectation for me. I went in to the viewing blind, knowing almost nothing about the plot. In fact, I'd only watched the trailers. I purposely avoided any articles for fear of spoilers.

The only time a film has ever affected me as much as this film did was when I saw The Exorcist at a teen on VHS in the 1980s. I wasn't prepared for it, no matter how often I'd heard of it. Same with this film.

There are scenes and visuals from this film that I'll never get out of my head...and I love it. That is what I look for in horror. Toni Collette was astonishingly good in her role as the new matriarch of the family.

She carried this film with the way she carefully navigated the line between insanity, passion, and primal fear. I can't quite put my finger on what the director was able to combine to achieve the effect he does with this film, but whatever the combination is, it worked perfectly.

This is the type of film that will be talked about forever, like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and others. It's a milestone in the genre, and will be used as a benchmark for other horror films that come after it.