Hereditary

Cafe Society
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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.

Has anyone else seen Hereditary and cares to share their opinion of it?

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NOBODY else?

I feel like a ghost in here.

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I liked it quite a bit but I do think it’s being mis-marketed. I didn’t think it was the “SCARIEST MOVIE EVER!!!” Instead, it’s one of those movies that’s kind of ponderous (at least until the last 15 minutes) but trades in a really unsettling, “off” tone. So the audience I saw it with was apparently expecting another SAW movie and laughed at parts that definitely weren’t supposed to be funny.

It reminded me a bit of The Witch, with maybe some of the tonal qualities of It Follows. Anyway, it’s a thumbs up from me.

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I’ll be glad to chime in once I’ve seen it (which will probably be this weekend); I’ve been looking forward to it for some time.

amaguri,The Witch and It Follows are my two favorite recent horror movies so that bodes well.

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I saw it this weekend. I have to say I enjoyed the first half way more than the actual horror movie part. Once it started dealing with the standard horror tropes of seances and floating people, it was pretty standard stuff. But it wasn’t bad, just not up to the raves.

Toni Colette should win an Oscar for this though.

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I really liked it, and it embodies the “slow burn” method of storytelling. As said above, it’s not the SCARIEST MOVIE EVER!!! but thematically, with the tiny scares along with unexpected occurrences, and creepy imagery, along with the final 15 minutes, it’s definitely unsettling.

I will say, however, that the story is very similar to what the Paranormal Activity movies have become, mythology-wise.

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If it’s any comfort, I am looking forward to following along in this thread, but have no intention of going to see the movie. I saw The VVitch and thought it was definitely worth the trauma but am not going to subject myself to that level of spookies twice in the same five-year period or so.

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I think the VVitch was a better movie.

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It was somewhat standard in the sense of the supernatural stuff, but in terms of involving ancient pagan gods, I thought it was pretty cool. Like Wicker Man (try to forget that the remake ever happened.) I’m endlessly fascinated by pre-Christian spiritual traditions from Europe, which existed long before Christ and continue to exist in elements of European Christian traditions which appropriated them, and in the form of modern-day adherents though the latter have arguably corrupted the beliefs to an enormous degree. Everyone of European descent, especially stupid narrow-minded Evangelical bigots in America, forget that at one point we were all just like the Native Americans and native peoples of Siberia and the Arctic, practicing a form of shamanism that respected the natural environment and revered the natural resources, whether it’s in the Alps, on the Pannonian Plain, the Navajo desert, the hills of Scotland, Finland, etc - we all once appreciated nature and FEARED it. Today, everything is different. There’s no reverence for it at all, or for old rituals that were supposed to bring people together to have a good time while respecting nature.

What really makes more sense, going to a gigantic church where you listen to a man telling you that God wants you to be rich and successful, or worshipping the trees that provide the wood that you need, the stream that provides the water that you need, the soil that provides the nourishment for the crops that you need, etc? I can’t fucking stand it. I’m sorry to be on my soapbox about this, it just hurts me to no end the way people callously disregard the environment.

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I’m the same, I liked it but didn’t love it. I think if I hadn’t seen commercials with “scariest movie ever” I would have had better expectations. It did genuinely shock and horrify me at parts, especially the incident that happens after the party.

It does do the tone very well. The actors were all great, I’ve read that Toni Collette is getting Oscar buzz and that’s deserved, but I also thought the son was fantastic. It was also beautiful shot, and very well done with shooting it like a dollhouse/diorama in some of the shots.

I was a little bit confused with what was happening, and then at the end there was exposition but that just restated what I already knew:

I don’t quite remember the sequence of events, but it seemed like Joan was helping Charlie get revenge on Peter for Charlie’s death. But it’s actually they were needing Peter’s body to bring back the demon. Had Charlie been the demon the whole time, and then once Peter died it was Charlie and the demon in his body? I do appreciate that it didn’t spell out everything, but I was confused by it. There are some horror movies I leave the theater with my skin still crawling from horror and dread, but leaving Hereditary I was trying to figure things out.

Also I saw it last night in a decent sized crowd but not a full theater, I wonder if it would have been better in a full theater…

I had read a tweet from someone about how when the mom is in the top corner of the room and you don’t really see/register her at first, and how in his theater you could hear as everyone registered that and freaked out. But I was confused about how she went from a mom freaking out to hanging out in the corner of the room. It seemed more goofy than scary to me. But maybe it would have been different in a full theater with a lot of people freaking out.

I overall liked the movie. It is the director’s first feature, I definitely look forward to what he’ll do next.

I didn’t get the same sense as you about the paganism stuff…

[spoiler]It was said more than once about worshiping the demon brings the followers wealth and power, it didn’t seem like a respect of nature it seemed like greed to me. Of course we don’t see much into the pagans’ mindset, since the mom is dead before the movie begins and Joan had been hiding her actions and motivations, but I didn’t get the sense of awe-filled worship like I’ve seen in other horror movies.

Also the pagans’ worship in the movie required two children to die. Also presumably Annie’s mom drove her son to his death (assuming that trying to make him the demon was what he meant by her trying to put voices into him). If you want to argue that the pagans have good ideas and we should listen to them more that’s an argument to make but this movie is not a good example of it.[/spoiler]

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I mean, I’m not one of these neo-pagan people, I don’t subscribe to any codified set of beliefs regarding that, it’s just a general sense that I have. Obviously I don’t condone worshipping demons or sacrificing people.

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As somebody for whom schizophrenia runs in the family, I thought the movie was a pretty good illustration of the disease, but that it leaned a little too hard on the supernatural horror tropes in the last ten or fifteen minutes.

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My understanding was that the demon was inside Charlie and causing her to act so weird (with the bird heads and stuff). The book that the mom read indicated that the demon preferred a male host so the entire goal of Joanie and the culties was to get him out of Charlie and into Peter.

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[spoiler]But once Peter got up after jumping out of the window he clocked his tongue, and I’m pretty sure Joan also calls him Charlie. So is Peter now possessed by Charlie and the demon?

In shows like Supernatural and other things I’ve seen, when demons go from body A to body B they leave the body A behind like it’s clothes they took off, and it has nothing to do with their new possession of body B. The movie is free to make up its own rules, or maybe it’s based on some pagan beliefs I don’t know about, but I was confused by it.
[/spoiler]

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I enjoyed it. I just wish that the theater had not been full of young folks and teenagers who giggled at absolutely everything and made comments at the screen the whole time. It’s really distracting. I should have just waited to rent it.

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It was worth paying to see but I spent too much time anticipating in the weeks beforehand and it didn’t go the way I expected. I was expecting a purely psychological horror, a sort of slow descent into madness, without a supernatural element. It turned out to be both and I feel like I need to let it go for awhile then see it again.

I also was reminded of The Witch but for some reason thought Ari Aster had a hand in that film. I found The Witch more unsettling.

Toni Collette was very good but I couldn’t ignore how similar she appeared to her role in The Sixth Sense (but nothing like Muriel’s Wedding).

Re Sam Lowry’s question:

My understanding is that the cultists were playing a long game of bringing Paimon into human form, starting with the grandmother regaining contact with Annie. Charlie was the embodiment of Paimon from shortly after birth due to the grandmother’s efforts, hence her demand to breastfeed her, etc. Kind of like Damian in The Antichrist. Paimon needs a male body to inhabit so the cultists prepare the way: causing Charlie’s death, conning Annie into carrying out the necessary ritual then cursing Peter. After jumping out the window, a light lands on his back and is absorbed. I took this to be Paimon inhabiting Peter. He then looks up and clicks his tongue.

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Questions:

How could Annie have gotten her mother’s body out of the grave and up into the attic? It must have been fairly heavy, no?

And how could Ellen Graham have fed baby Charlie? The miniature figures clearly show her with one breast outside her nightgown as she hovers over Annie’s bed. Ellen could not have been lactating.

Why didn’t Charlie check the cake first to see if there were nuts in it?

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Re: #1

I don’t think Annie did that. I think the cult did.

Re: #3

I feel like the movie set up that Charlie was not the best at checking her food for nuts, the way her parents kept asking her about the chocolate bar at the funeral. She’s a dumb kid. Or maybe Paimon made her!

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#1: Annie didn’t. The cult members did.

#2: I forget, did Annie say that her mother *actually *breastfed Charlie? Or was that diorama just more of a metaphor.

#3: Charlie was not quite right in the head. She was very strange from the beginning, likely due to her grandmother’s influence.

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#3: Early on at the party, some one is chopping walnuts with what I guess is meant to be the same knife used to cut the cake.