Hereditary

I’ll get straight to it then. I saw Hereditary, and I bloody loved it. I thought it was eerie, unnerving, and tense, just like Mama used to make. If your Mama was Kubrick, or Polanski. Having said that, I can tell that this movie – like previous A24 release The Witch – will not be for everyone. Indeed, I heard some people proclaiming as they left the cinema that it was, and I quote, “shit”. Don’t get me wrong, you are entitled to your (incorrect) opinion, but just because a movie isn’t quite what you wanted does not mean that it stinks.

This tale of a family cursed may sound familiar, but that’s by design. Matriarch dies, funeral alludes to her being somewhat of an overbearing thorn in her daughter’s side who had “private rituals, private friends…” daughter struggles to grieve, throws herself into her work (making creepy-as-fuck dolls house dioramas based on her own life), starts to uncover secrets about her mother (she’s definitely a witch), and tries her best to save her family from evil (they’re definitely fucked). The tension mounts as she starts to uncover more and more information about her dead mom and the company she used to keep, whilst her weird family get weirder as they all struggle to grieve through different methods that variously include smoking pot, cutting heads of birds, and sitting at a table being Gabriel Byrne. Just when you are waiting for something horrible to happen, it does. And it’s pretty horrible. This is as far as we go without getting into spoilers, so let’s break it down.

The acting is mostly amazing. Milly Shapiro is brilliant as the dissociative, strange-noise-making young (grand)daughter, Alex Wolff is amazing as the teenage (grand)son torn between independence and family, and Toni Collette is fantastic as the artist/mother who struggles with simultaneously not feeling emotions and not wanting them. However, Gabriel Byrne’s father character seems to want to just go to work, come home, and wait for it all to fall to shit (I mean, I understand not wanting to upset your wife, but at some point you should probably mention to her that her mother’s grave was desecrated), and Ann Dowd (playing “weird stranger at grief counselling”) leaps into the film like an (inverted) cross between Anton Lavey and Widow Twankey.

Having said that, the absolutely amazing cinematography from Pawel Pogorzelski is used to construct an overtly artificial world in which the film exists with shots following coffins into graves, and blending the real world with the constructed world that Collette’s character creates (both literally and figuratively) giving the impression that there are hidden forces watching and guiding the characters and their story. Perhaps Byrne’s and Dowd’s characters are just an extension of this? Less about sloppy writing and more about trope-fuelled symbolism to enable the story to get to the point? You decide.

The film also suffers from over exposition a little towards the end. I was more than happy for it to get weirder and weirder without needing my hand held as to why. I mean, let’s face it, for a movie that plays on generic expectations it seems a bit silly to footnote the audience through the reveal. I mean, it can only be one of two things, and I’m happy going home wondering which of them was more likely.

All in all I really enjoyed this slow-burn/big ending movie, as for me the good points outweigh the bad. Just as you start to lower your guard, something happens to hit you in the face, and both the audience and the characters are left reeling. However, some people won’t be happy. Apparently. Don’t ask me why though.

8/10