A Filmmaker's Review: 'Hereditary' (2018)

Hereditary (2018) is a movie I have watched many many times, all the way through, in individual parts, in sections and even backwards, forwards and inside out. I have tried over and over again to see what the hype was all about and, I have even tried telling myself repeatedly that I must love this movie because everyone else does. Let me explain why I finally gave it a two out of five rating.

First of all, let me just say that I don't hate this movie in the way that an opinion from a 20-something woman would. I do think that this movie, on the surface, is an enjoyable piece of entertainment. However, we are rating the film on its ability to showcase its genre and the way in which it adds to the already prevalent culture of horror film. To be honest, I have to say it isn't really doing anything majorly different except for obliterating your eardrums with those violins.

Let's go through the characters. The character acting was actually pretty good, accurate and immersive - with Toni Collette giving a spectacular three dimensional performance of her character - Annie. My favourite character though was Charley - the small child simply captures your heart and when she dies, it is absolutely heartbreaking. The two stars are for Charley's performance.

The atmosphere I believe is more that of a thriller than a horror film. The horror isn't really completely there, it's more like half there. You're halfway expectant and then, when you're expecting something and nothing appears - it seems not only anti-climatic, but this process is repeated to the point of sheer boredom. For example: I know the kid has a stomach ache, and then he has one again, and then he slams his head off a desk and nothing happens every time. You build up a resistance to it and just think 'well, this is rather drawn out an annoying.' Instead of being disturbed like the director wants you to be.

Once we are done with character analysis and genre analysis, we have various themes in the film which seem a tad bit overdone to be honest. When we look close enough, we see that the theme of beheading and heads is a bit over the top and there really is no requirement for most of it. I'm not going to lie, I didn't understand the point of beheading the bird outside the classroom window - what the hell was that adding to the story? It seemed to be a bit over the top as well compared to the other themes in the story - such as the theme of movement or the theme of guilt and despair. These themes I felt required to be bigger so that the film could be better understood.

It's trying to be very disturbing as opposed to jump scare horror which I respect a lot but I don't think it has been done very well since most of the film still relies on repetitive shock in order to scare its audience. First of all, we have that scene of the kid's head whilst the ear-obliterating violins play and the mother screams. But, after that - we get a repeated scenario in a different sense. The violins, the shouting or talking over it and the 'scary scene' in the forefront. The audience becomes used to this and so, through the latter part of the film, it ceases to have the desired effect. When it comes down to it, the film starts off very well in terms of disturbing impact, but as it repeats the idea - it recedes down and down until it becomes almost mundane by the final act of the film.

The film may be good as an idea but the execution seems to still require some work. I feel like Aster's Midsommar is a better example of this type of horror and you can read my study of it here: https://vocal.media/horror/a-filmmaker-s-guide-ari-aster-s-midsommar-2019 This is a film in which major themes are depicted far better and are fleshed out (get it?) more than some of those in this film we are looking at. I do feel however, Aster's filmmaking skill is developing and what we're getting is a new-age kind of horror that I for one am very excited about and am looking forward to.