Hereditary

By: Arlene Allen

From the opening moments of Hereditary, where we’re treated to the sight of miniature houses with miniature rooms, we know we are in for a hair-raising ride and the movie sure doesn’t disappoint! With creative cinematography, remarkable use of camera angles, Hereditary has to be one of the creepiest films I’ve seen in a long time.

Hereditary tells the story of an unusual and severely dysfunctional family. Mom Annie (Toni Collette) has just buried her mother, whom she has conflicting feelings about. She creates miniatures and is getting ready for a gallery show. Her taste runs to the macabre – one of her scenes is the hospital room where grandma died, complete with miniature grandma and nurse. Son Peter (Alex Wolff) is a stoner with absolutely no goals other than to get high. Charlie (newcomer Milly Shapiro) is a weird kid, drawing all the time. She also likes to cut the heads off dead birds to place on top of the weird toys she creates. I’d say Dad (Gabriel Byrne) was the “normal” one, but who on earth puts up with the kind of crazy going on in his house?

Unsurprisingly after grandma’s death, Annie is haunted by her mother’s presence. You’ll want to sleep with your lights on after that sequence. That is the kind of horror I love – the subtle the psychological, the kind that raises the hair on the back of your neck.  It’s downright chilling. But the true terror doesn’t begin until a gruesome accident occurs and tears the family apart and lets the real evil in.

The performances in this film are tight and on point, but the biggest props go to Alex Wolff as tormented Peter and to Milly Shapiro as weird kid Charlie. Charlie makes a clucking sound with her voice and you won’t be able to get the sound out of your head. Shapiro also masters the art of making crazy eyes!

The use of miniatures throughout the film is brilliant and adds to the building tension and sense that something is very, very off in the household. As I’ve said, the cinematography is spot on. The film, by director Ari Aster, is a different kind of horror movie, minimizing gore to make it more effective when it does occur.  I thought Hereditary was a terrific film, a truly scary movie of the kind we don’t see much of anymore and definitely need more of.  Give yourself a huge dose of the creeps and see this film in theaters now!