Hereditary
A24, the production company that brought us The Witch and It Comes at Night, are back to scare the bejeezus out of audiences this June with their latest movie, Hereditary. Horror fans might already have been sleeping with one eye open waiting for this spooky little number to drop ever since it terrified audiences at the Sundance Film Festival back in January (I know I have) and it seems like that wait will be worth it, because by all accounts, this is one scary mother of a movie.
Written and directed by newcomer Ari Aster, and starring Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, The Sixth Sense), and Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects), this film has been described as “this generations Exorcist” and it’s easy to see why. Creepy kids, dark powers, a family torn apart… the perfect recipe for a chilling tale all about bloodlines, fate, and evil. Lots of evil. As with many films in the genre, Hereditary starts with a death. In this case, the death of the Graham family’s elderly Matriarch. It’s after this event that strange things start to happen to the family, and the supernatural truth becomes steadily harder to ignore as the descent into terror begins.
This is a clever film that works on more than one level, and promises to have mass appeal for horror fans. You want jump scares, you got ‘em. You want an ever increasing sense of unease, check. Horrific imagery? We got you, fam. It’s all there, you get funhouse horror scares mixed with psychologically traumatic terror – and it works. Collette and Byrne are great as ever, but the real stars are newcomers Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro as the two youngest members of the Graham family. Aster does an outstanding job of slowly unravelling this chilling story whilst at the same time not keeping the audience waiting too long to be scared shitless which is no mean feat. I guarantee that there is something in this movie to scare everyone. So, If you think that you can take it, see this movie, just don’t see it alone. Dear God, not alone.
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