Review of Hereditary (2018) by Moviemitch96 — 07 Jun 2018

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I honestly don't care: A24 doesn't know how to do horror! Most people seem to think 'The Witch' is absolutely terrifying and amazing whereas I not only found it to be one of THE WORST movies I've ever seen, but also zero percent scary and not even remotely creepy, and I also thought it was the worst unintentional comedy I'd ever seen since 2006s 'The Wicker Man' with Nic Cage! The year after, with 'It Comes at Night', I personally thought that had a much creepier atmosphere and more intriguing premise and was slightly better overall, but the final product left much to be desired.

Well, with this latest (and waaayyy too overhyped) addition to A24's filmography, they've once again proven to me that they don't really know a good or truly scary horror movie when they see one, at least in my opinion they don't.

Much like 'The Witch' and 'It Comes at Night', it was such a slow burn with little or no horror until the very end, and none of these films have any moments of horror whatsoever if you ask me. Furthermore, it certainly didn't help that not only did this remind me an awful lot of 'The Witch', but it had so many predictable moments and tropes that we've seen time and again in so many previous horror films.

Silly-looking naked old people (yep 'The Witch' and 'It Follows' had that too), creepy smiling dead people (the Insidious films did this much better), possessed people climbing walls and hiding in ceiling corners (sounds like just about every possession movie out there), possessed people banging their heads on desks, walls, etc.

(seen that a million times), a dog getting killed (A24's infamous for that at this point), a possessed person joining a ridiculous-looking witch-like coven or cult at the very end of the film after most or all of their family's been slaughtered (you guessed it, 'The Witch' did it too!) Overall, the only positive it had going for it was Toni Colette's fierce performance.

Everyone else was pretty underwhelming to be honest. And like I said before, this movie just isn't scary and there's literally nothing new to see here that hasn't been done before, whether better or worse.