31 Days of Halloween 2018: Hereditary

Starting in 2011 we (Marmy and I, as Kent is not that much of a horror fan) enjoyed celebrating the Halloween season (as soon as the candies hit the stores) by watching too many horror / Halloween related movies, most of them bad.  2012 had a few flicks but not the full month. Un/Re-employment kill 2013. Apathy killed 2014. But we returned in 2015 with a full run. 2016 had a good start, but stalled in the last few days, likely due to work life. 2017 almost started with a fizzle, but then I remembered, "It's October 1st !"  But it fizzled out on my birthday with the last few episodes of Stranger Things S2. This year, after I fizzled out the "break the hiatus" for this site, I actually found myself excited to do at least THIS month. 

And so we begin.

2018, Ari Aster (feature debut) -- download

So, what do you like in your horror movies?  I know I have asked this question many times on many different posts, but the fact we start this loose tradition again, makes me wonder what will succeed (with us) and what will fail? Jump scares? Haunting music? Creepy background stuff? Body horror? Blood & gore? Suspense thicker than congealed blood? There are so many elements that make up a good movie, but it takes a delicate balance to make a great horror movie.

Hereditary does that.

Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne are married with children (note: he is 17 years older than her, which is gratingly obvious). Toni's mother has recently passed and there is an odd, palpable apathy to her death and the family's reaction. History; bad history. Toni is an artist, in miniature (yes! love, LOVE the works represented in this movie!!) who begins working out her issues with her mom, issues that (after a brief stint at a grief session) revealed to be completely and truly understood, through small dioramas of the most unsettling nature. They have a rather lovely house. Houses with dark pasts are almost always so lovely.

Meanwhile her daughter, played wonderfully creepily by Milly Shapiro (it cannot be overlooked that part of Milly's off-putting nature is heightened by her cleidocranial dysplasia features; but they must have been enhanced by makeup, because she really isn't all that creepy in real life) is not helping our sense of displeasure at this family. Was gramma a witch or just insane? Did her daughter carry it on, or her grandaughter? Or both? Both women send chills down our spines. Toni does disturbing dioramas of her dead mother and Milly cuts the heads off dead birds.

The movie takes this unsettled space, a family plagued by mental illness and possibly worse, and just keeps on ratcheting it up. And up and up and up. With tone and colour and sound (oh, that background deep tone that runs through the tensest scenes....) we are left entirely anxious. Even if this movie had never tried to introduce any supernatural elements, it would have left me squirming in my seat over how entirely on edge this family was.

I really don't want to spoil a major plot element that splits the movie in two; I am still rather surprised I was not aware of it. But it turns the movie on end, as well as sending it down the inevitable path we should expect, as the family just completely falls apart in response. Let us say, the movie is relentless in doing harm to this family. Gabriel Byrne, who begins as a charming (if cardboard) nice guy, slowly unravels. The son, well the son who was a little bent before, is broken entirely, and nobody seems to be helping him. Mom is not very motherly.

If anything, by the time this rollercoaster has run its course, we have been served most of the above ingredients of a horror movie. Most are successful, some are less so. As Marmy said, it may have explained too much, but I did love how it decided to take on a rather 70s ghosts & witches pallour, rather than leaving us in the usual ambiguity. I really enjoyed it, but I can see how it could take away for some people.