Wow. I mean…wow.
The most intense and scary movie I’ve seen made in the past few years. Very effective, amazingly acted, and a whole heck of a lot better than the bigger hit A Quiet Place(which I also liked).
I mean…this movie should have been a bigger hit, though it is almost too much for many.
Anyone else see this?
I did, and it had me going until the ending and then…nothing. All the way along it was a smart, creepy, atmospheric movie and then, in my opinion, lost it.
I made a thread about it after I first saw it months ago. I’ll just re-post here what I posted there:
I just saw the film “Hereditary.” I must say, I was very impressed indeed with what I saw. It’s been a while since I saw a really good horror movie. Well, this is a true contemporary horror movie, which draws as much from the atmosphere of David Lynch and the aesthetics of Wes Anderson as from the influences of earlier classic supernatural horror films like Deep Red, Suspiria, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Shining, &c.
It was a spectacularly beautiful movie to look at. The color palette was captivating. The architectural details including the miniature home sculptures and the exquisite Craftsman manor that the family lived in, alone, made the movie worth watching.
The sound design was outstanding - recalling, as I mentioned earlier, David Lynch, with adept use of low and high frequencies to create a soundtrack that was more organic than musical.
For the first half of the movie, I actually thought the film was going to be that exceptionally rare creature: a horror film with neither supernatural elements nor a malevolent villain. Indeed, I think the filmmakers could have actually pulled this off if they had sought to do so. The domestic drama of grieving, mental illness, and harrowing automobile accidents are, frankly, enough to comprise a full-blown horror movie (with the right soundtrack and cinematography) without involving any supernatural force or a person with evil intentions. Sadly, this was not the case here.
But the movie wasn’t much worse off for it. Indeed, the meagre supernatural content was not in sufficient supply as to require the viewer to check his brain at the door. It was far less overbearing, for instance, than the overrated Stranger Things, and was just about at the same level as the far superior German show Dark. (The color palette of the latter is also similar to this movie.)
Overall, I think this is certainly a strong contender for the best horror film of the year, though it may yet be unseated by the offerings this fall.
I was with it until the end, but I do see that the developments in the final 20% could throw some people. In fact, I think the final moments in the treehouse(?) type place didn’t freak me out all that much. I think a clear moment where the demon takes over the main boy could have been powerful. He just kind of stared around…disappointing.
I did too. I can almost see this script being written and the writer getting to the point of:
It’s supernatural.
It’s mental illness.
It’s ambiguous.
I think many movies would go for “ambiguous” and I’m glad that this movie had the strength of just telling us that it is definitely supernatural. I mean…Gabriel Byrne did burn when she threw the book in the fire.
I thought Hereditary was going to reference the passing down of intense mental illness, the daughter(Charlie) being the next one to get it.
I"m glad it went the way it did…but yeah, I was more scared in the opening 80%.
Is it streaming anywhere? Netflix, etc.?
AGREED! There were several really freaky and powerful scenes, the mom banging on the door, the shadowy nude people, the mom sawing off her head.
If I was ruling the world, I would have had the boy (after falling out the window), sit up, look confused for a moment, then give a bit of a sly look and CLUCK.
I hate it when the writer/director/whatever feel the need to spoon-feed an ending.
I though it was very good.
The family members I saw it with did not.
I watched it alone and I don’t think my wife would have enjoyed it at all. When the little girl’s head gets hit by the pole, I wretched and almost screamed. My wife would NOT like that.
I would put this up with Oldboy in the “movies I enjoyed but my wife would not like”.
According to this site, it is on Amazon now, and will be on Netflix on 9/4/18.
then a rastafarian guy pops in screen and says “When come back, bring Pai-mon!”
I don’t care about the Oscars almost ever, but Toni Collette deserves an Oscar for her performance in this movie. If she wins one, I’ll actually be really happy for her.
Her yelling at her son at the dinner table was so painful, real, and shocking. What a performance. Must have been a weird day of filming.
As usual, I’m a little late to the party but I watched this yesterday and I had to chime in. I had been looking forward to this for months, then. as it looked like I wasn’t going to get a chance to see it for a while, I read a detailed synopsis. The way it was described kind of turned me off and I forgot about it until I saw it available for rent. Holy crap, I wish I’d seen this in the theater, if even for the soundtrack alone.
I love horror, though the Satanic / cult theme is at the bottom of my list. So much so that I don’t usually bother with it. This was so much more though, that I can forgive that part and the heavy handed way it was foisted on us at the end. At least the visuals were somewhat new . TC sawing off her own head should have been cheesy as hell, but damn if it didn’t freak me out, especially when you could still hear it after the son jumped out the window.
Even the played out jump scare of a bird crashing into a window a giant BANG! worked in this one. The noise still startled / irritated me but Charlie cutting of it’s head and stuffing it in her pocket was just so “WTF???”
Speaking of Charlie, they could not have cast a better actress. That is one . . . * unusual* looking little girl. Can we assume she got the role, at least partly, based on her looks? Not that she didn’t do a good job acting but I wonder if she’ll be typecast as “oddball”. On the other hand, for all I know she could grow up to be a beauty.
It was strange to see Ann “Aunt Lydia” Dowd wearing makeup. And a smile! Unfortunately her little invocation at the end was the worst part of that whole scene.
Agreed - the head sawing off scene was intense, so was the banging on the attic door 
I heard someone point out that the human-side of suffering is the real horror, not the supernatural stuff.
The kid sitting their silent after his sister dies was horrific and disturbing .
Oh god, yes. So well acted and directed. It seemed a realistic reaction; utter shock and disbelief and I don’t what. And then when he’s in bed waiting for his mom to discover her body and we hear hear blood curdling, anguished screams. . . oy vey. One thing that had me confused at the time; was that supposed to be later that night and she just happened to go outside? I couldn’t hear what was being said so I didn’t know if it was supposed to be the next morning and the authorities came to the door or if she was asking the husband if he’d seen the daughter or what. There were actually a few parts where I missed some dialogue. I did not hear anything about the mother brother’s dying as a child and a few other things that I’ve only since learned about after reading different reviews.
I was nauseated with the horror of his mother finding the body in the car. This is what I’m talking about with it being the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
I still think about that scene a month later.
Just saw this and loved it. I’m choosing this thread (of the three I found in a search) because it has a question I can answer.
I think it would have been a better movie if they went for mental illness instead of supernatural. Throwing the book in the fire and the husband bursting into flames could have been the psychotic wife dousing him in paint thinner and lighting him on fire. (And oh man, what a horrifying sleepwalking story she told to Joan. Yikes.)
Even still, I loved it. I do like supernatural horror movies; one of my favorites is the Paranormal Activity franchise, and this was head and shoulders above that. But this was so much better precisely because it went for psychological terror instead of supernatural horror, so I think leaning fully into the former would have been more effective.
We see him come home, and then hear (thanks to BluRay subtitles) both parents say “Good, they’re home.” from their bedroom but they don’t come out. He goes to his room, lays in bed, and it’s heavily implied that he just lay there unable to sleep all night long.
In the morning (the light is different) we hear the parents discuss regular morning stuff (again thanks to subtitles) while the camera stays on his face. The mom says she’s going to the store or whatever and then we hear her leave, open the car door, and then start screaming.
She told that story in group: Her brother hanged himself in her mother’s bedroom as a teenager because her mother was “trying to put voices in his head.”
And from one of the other threads…
I haven’t seen Handmaid’s Tale yet, but if you like Ann Dowd in monstrous roles, check out The Leftovers.
I read somewhere that Milly Shapiro has the medical condition cleidocranial dysplasia. According to Wikipedia:
“…a birth defect that mostly affects the bones and teeth. The collarbones are typically either poorly developed or absent, which allows the shoulders to be brought close together. The front of the skull often does not close until later, and those affected are often shorter than average. Other symptoms may include a prominent forehead, wide set eyes, abnormal teeth, and a flat nose.”
There is at least one shot in the film where you can clearly see her sloping shoulders.
Ms. Shapiro had the starring role in the Broadway show Matilda the Musical. So she has talents beyond looking and acting a bit… unconventional.
I’ve avoided this thread because I wanted to watch the film untainted…
That was one of the worst endings I have ever seen. It was MST3K/Best of the Worst bad. It was just so fucking dumb.