Hereditary (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hereditary (2018) – A. Aster

The quest for the perfect supernatural horror film continues (and by that I mean a film without gore or sadistic torture).  Hereditary managed to hold my attention despite its excruciating and intense personal drama (and awful sadness and grief) but even at its conclusion, I’m still not certain what was reality and what was not.  To be specific, we are told early on that Annie (Toni Collette) has a family history of mental illness – so as things get quite bizarre, viewers are left to wonder (and also to think about whether any of this is stigmatising to people with mental illness).  Annie has two children, an older son Peter (Alex Wolff) and a younger daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro), as well as a loving husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) who may have been her psychiatrist.  The film opens with Annie’s mother having just died and we learn that their relationship had been fraught with tension and the mother had been secretive and distant but especially interested in Charlie.  Annie finds a box of stuff that seems to indicate that her mum had a strong interest in the supernatural.  Soon, things start to unravel for the family and guilt, blame, and antagonism become key to the relationship between Annie and Peter in particular.  Annie is comforted by a stranger that she met through a twelve-step grief program who is also interested in the supernatural.  To say any more would probably be criminal, but for those who have already seen the film, it’s worth noting that even horror classics such as The Exorcist (1974) often had family tensions at their core (Regan was a child of divorce, after all).  And similar to recent films such as The Witch (2015) or Mother! (2017), by the end, we are challenged to accept an alternate reading of “the facts” that might not be entirely believable (and in this case might come too much out of the blue).  I would have preferred a slower build up of the supernatural story but it is clear that the director (first timer Ari Aster) was more devoted to addressing the family dynamics at play. Of course, I may be forever searching for that “perfect” supernatural horror film and might have to be satisfied with one that ticks as many boxes as Hereditary does.