Hereditary

Movie Name: Hereditary
Year of Release: 2018

Director: Ari Aster

Stars: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Mallory Betchel, Jarrod Phillips
Genre: Drama, Horror

Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 7
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Synopsis:

"Hereditary" is the feature length debut of director Ari Aster, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival of 2018 to great reviews. The film follows the story of a tight family, who have just suffered the death of their matriarch figure, the grandmother, who was at odds with Annie, her daughter, with whom she was estranged for a large part of her life. Annie, an artist who specializes in creating model replicas of what her life is about, goes to group therapy in order to deal with all these bottled feelings she has towards her mom. Her relationship with her two children is somewhat distant, due to some events that occurred previously. When her son Peter asks permission to go to a party, Annie forces him to take her younger sister, Charlie. Charlie who suffers from nut allergy, eats chocolate cake at the party, which induces her into a shock, forcing Peter to drive frantically to the hospital to help her. On the way to the hospital, they suffer an accident, that instantly kills Charlie, plunging the family to a deeper depression. Annie gets support from a woman by the name of Joan, who claims that during a spiritual gathering, she managed to get in contact with her lost son and grandson. Annie decides to do the same, and opens the door to unexpected and tragic events.
"Hereditary" is a great debut from Ari Aster. The writer/director manages to create a story that is compelling, detailed, thorough, paying attention to the family dynamics, painting that canvas before introducing the more abnormal or horror elements to it. Very much in the vein that William Friedkin painted with "The Exorcist", this is a story of a family who is dealing with grief, but that opens the door to things that are unknown and out of control. It's a film that takes its time to showcase the different personalities within that small familial universe, something that slowly gets disintegrated, until the entire plot is revealed. The entire cast is uniformly great, with Toni Colette again creating a fantastic character, filled with grief, anger and horror. The cinematography from Pawel Pogorzelski is beautiful, as is the score from Colin Stetson. A very good film worth watching.