"Hereditary" (2018)

The buzz for this film was that it was the scariest of the year, possibly years leading up to it. So, naturally, I had to check it out.

As is often the case with horror films, Hereditary is not exactly scary, more like disturbing. Although there are certainly moments in the film that deliver that chill down the spine that horror fans are looking for, it is more like a distasteful exercise in toying with grief. Like the film that it most tries to emulate, Rosemary’s Baby, it is more about unsettling audiences than scaring them. It just does so with less dexterity and contemplation.

The story here is the oft-told idea of devil worshipers hiding in society and threatening it. Only here, as the title implies, it is the very family of our main characters who are the threat. Where it, unlike Rosemary, fails to deliver is that we do not worry that our own families, or those around us are a threat at the end of the movie. There is a heightened artificiality in Hereditary that shields us.

The opening shot of the film sets the stage. We zoom into a house through a window and onto a dollhouse model of that very house. And with a seamless cut, our characters appear, and we are in the action. For the rest of the movie the characters are less real people and more like puppets being played with by the director. There is even a moment later in the film where we hear a teacher teaching a class about fate and the inescapability of it.

By the time you get to the end of the story, the climax feels less like a horrific possibility and more of a perverted child’s play. And, the sacrilegious aspects are not even as offensive as the way the film gawks at mental illness.