A Short Review of 'Hereditary' (2018, Ari Aster)

I recently came across a statement declaring that a good horror, makes you think. Something I certainly agree with as a horror fan.

Hereditary certainly made me think. It made me think, why did the film makers decide to go down this route. I really wanted to like this film. I hoped that the hype it had been receiving, with quotes like 'it's the new Exorcist', wouldn't get my hopes up and leave me severely disappointed but I'm afraid that it has.

At first the film started off brilliant for me. The film hosts a number of very well done performances from the actors, as well as some brilliant cinematography, which very successfully complimented it's creepy atmosphere. Also the film itself starts off as a slow burning, psychological horror, combined with a very good minimal usage of gore which made the film truly disturbing and highly suspenseful. Very much something I always look for in a decent horror film.

However, after the middle of the film, the story takes a slightly different genre route and goes down the Occult sub genre, which I was fine with. I still enjoyed it and still found it very suspenseful and disturbing. Then we got to the last act, where the atmosphere and tone seriously takes a sharp turn. So sharp that it completely stands apart from the rest of the film. It actually threw me off guard and for a second I thought they had started playing a completely different film to the one I was supposed to be watching.

Why they decided to make the ending like this I'm not sure. To my eyes it just mismatches with everything else in the film and it has unfortunately ruined it for me. I still really want to love this film and as I pointed out earlier I loved how it started out and I love significant elements of it but I can't because of that ending. It is just too out of place and too different in tone to the rest of the film. Maybe I'm missing something; maybe I was just caught off guard by the change in tone, but I have to be frank.

In my opinion it just doesn't work. It is so inconsistent from the rest of the film that it just makes me ask why did they do this? The ending is admittedly still fairly creepy, it's clearly very similar to the kind of scenes you would see in Rosemary's Baby (1968, Roman Polanski) which the director has stated was one of his influences, but for me its too out of place and too unsubtle, to consistently match with the rest of the film. Which for me just creates a huge distraction from the films really good elements.

Now the film has become very popular amongst audiences and some critics. With people comparing it to the likes of The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick) and The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin). It is definitely not The Exorcist, nor The Shining, like people are saying. However despite that, its not a bad film either. There were things that I definitely enjoyed about this film, I think the director, Ari Aster, is definitely very gifted. He has done a very good job and he has a clear love for the genre.

Regrettably, for me the film just fell short of my standards. I could have and really wanted to love it because of its immensely creepy atmosphere, high peaked suspense and disturbing elements of the story but I'm sorry to say that in my opinion, it is definitely not the great film its being made out to be. I know for a fact that there are many people who do like this film, and they have every right to, but I am regrettably not one of them. I honestly cannot say what I think about this film. I don't dislike it or hate it or even particularly like it. Instead I just constantly find myself asking, why.