Review of Hereditary (2018) by Helen N — 10 Jun 2018

First of all I created this account specifically for this film and to counter all of the toxic, misguided reviews plaguing the audience score by people who either had the attention span of a three year old child or simply couldn't understand what this film was going for and were expecting a run of the mill "simplistic" horror with all the bells and whistles and classic tropes we all see coming. If that is what you are expecting then please remove yourself from the cinema because this film is not for you.

Now onto the review. One thing came to mind after going to see this film with my boyfriend as we both walked out of the cinema; this is how you make a horror film. Even now there are moments from this film that are burned into my memory and I cannot stop thinking about it. Hereditary is a slow burn and it does require your full attention at every single intricate detail and word of dialogue that is in this film as all of it is deliberate. It is a methodical, calculated beast that slowly begins to grip you with tension from the very first slow pan into the miniature house that reflects inevitability which is a common theme throughout Hereditary. Everything that plays out in this film is inevitable as the forces outside of this family's over-arching drama and tragedy carefully manipulate and unravel each family member until it grips them with the realisation of the nightmare they were always a part of but never truly realised.

The most tragic part is the audience too never realises it until the very end as the way this film misdirects the narrative makes what the final act eventually transcends into all the more shocking and blood-curdling. My boyfriend is a strong one when it comes to horror films and he came into this film highly sceptical especially after seeing some of the reviews on here. However after the raw and powerful scene that plays out within the first half hour, this film sank its teeth into him and did not let go for the rest of the film. I watched him slowly become more and more unnerved by the themes of this film and how it plays with mortality, death, inevitably and satanic themes that is handled in such a realistic and raw way that honestly you could believe this could happen to a family even without the supernatural elements involved. By the end of it all he sat huddled against me unable to look up at the screen that he missed the final five minutes of this film because he could no longer handle it. When I described what he missed out on afterwards he just said to me, "this film got under my skin and made me think about things I didn't want to think about." That's not even a joke, this film scared my boyfriend.

As for me, this film didn't scare me, it honestly didn't because I love the genre and am quite numb to how it scares general viewers. However what this film did was disturb me and unnerve me especially after I start to think about all the previous scenes and how the clues to the finale were always in front of us but we never truly saw through it. When I think about this film, all the scenes after the first viewing completely change and become twisted and distorted for me with the knowledge I have now and what the director's intentions were. This is a masterful film that utilises every single piece of detail and not once strays from what its story truly is. The tension slowly builds and infects your mind whilst the impeccable acting by everyone involved grips your heart and toys with your emotions, combined with a score and sound effects that are bone-chilling at times and you are left with a film that not only demands your attention but outright forces the attention from you as it begins to stab its knives into your back one by one. No jumpscares, no bullshit, there are scenes where the horror is right in front of your eyes and when you realise it as the character's fail to you'll be on the edge of your seat. The things I saw out of the corner of my eyes are things my younger self was paranoid of to death for years. Every ounce of horror doesn't scream at you, it just shows you and leaves you sitting there with the knowledge something nightmarish is unfolding and you can't stop it nor can any of the people in this story, they are just miniatures trapped in a broken wreck inherited from those before them who were sewing the seeds long before they ever had a chance to fight against it. The real horror of Hereditary is the fact that it's real, there is no happy ending, no character redemption's, no escape, no way to fight back, no last second deus ex machina's, no mercy. It's just what horror would be in reality, an inescapable nightmare beyond our mind's comprehension and beyond all real hope of escaping from. In reality if something supernatural occurred, we wouldn't be able to combat it because we have no real understanding of it besides our own opinions on how to stop it as depicted in cliche horror films. We wouldn't be able to stop what we don't understand, that's what this film does. It gives you the illusion that there might be a sliver of hope for this family and then rips it apart and drowns you in the cruel reality that horror doesn't play by our rules, it has no rules, it never did and what that leaves us with is a genuine sense of dread and uneasiness that reflects our own fear of death. If you don't fear death, by the end of this film you'll think twice.

I think above all else this film's crowning achievement was that, it tore down my smugness and my view on my own mortality and on horror and how I view such things when it comes to reality. It left me contemplating it on a level I didn't like and has changed my perception on such things and for that I applaud it immensely. This film left my audience deathly quiet and we all sat there during the credits just letting the entirety of what we had seen sink in. There was no laughter to be had at all throughout this screening, heck we even had a group of teenage girls come in who were obnoxious as all hell during the start and yet from the very scene that started to grip my boyfriend into this elaborate labyrinth of psychological horror, they too became engrossed and horrified by the excruciating tension that drowns this film. I'm lucky I had an audience that ended up appreciating it and left the cinema just as shaken and thought-provoked as I had been.

I don't agree that this film is this generation's "The Exorcist" because to be quite frank it is superior to the Exorcist and is far more intelligent as well as terrifying than that film was. This is its own film, it earns whatever awards it may win and it rightfully deserves to be recognised as standing on its own two legs without being compared to any specific horror film. Fear is subjective to us all, Hereditary plays upon several aspects of fear and I guarantee regardless of whether or not you liked it at least one or two things in this film will be seared into your memory long after the credits roll.