As we’ve seen countless times, the weight of expectation can be an ambiguous gift to a film, but it’s fair to say that few recent horrors have enjoyed such a steadily-building sense of anticipation as Hereditary (2018), which has been running tantalising trailers for the past few months. For one thing, the return of Toni Collette to the horror genre has been a boon – she really is a superb actress for this kind of thing – and for another, we seem to be enjoying a run of supernatural horror; it’s a welcome development for fans, some of whom may have felt somewhat starved of it in recent years. That said, the now-obligatory discussions about whether or not Hereditary is a horror film at all have proved to be a rather tedious add-on, unnecessary and bewildering for fans of the genre, who already know that it can do all of the sophisticated, multi-layered things which seem to come as such a surprise to others that they need to feel around for a new title for it every single time. I tried, as ever, to put all of this to the back of my mind ahead of seeing the film – which lo and behold, is as much of a horror film as I’ve ever seen in my life.
The resulting piece of work is undoubtedly very good, and would certainly merit a re-watch; the more I think about it, the more I’m certain I missed a few visual tics and cues which would benefit my appreciation of the film overall. I was also impressed by the fact that, despite using a number of very familiar elements, Hereditary managed to pull a few surprise shifts in direction out of the bag, referencing a range of ideas which are oddly underused in a genre forever looking for new, or at least relatively new terrain. But there are a few issues too, and a few elements and decisions which left me rather lukewarm.
The essence of the plot concerns family, and the rot which can set in within families. In effect, Hereditary is the horror film version of Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’. We start with a eulogy: Annie Graham’s (Collette) mother has recently passed away after a long illness. Her death leaves a sense of absence, but – as made abundantly clear during Annie’s reading at the funeral – their relationship had long been troubled to the point of total breakdown, although mother Ellen had spent some time living with the Graham family before moving to a hospice. You quickly imagine how difficult that must have been. Painting a picture of her mother as a difficult, private woman, Collette captures that mangled sense of grief whereby you don’t feel as sad as you feel like you should.
For the Graham family then, husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and children, teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff) and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) life goes on, but with an uneasy sense of unfinished business. For Charlie in particular, the shift in family dynamics seems to have hit hard, and the child takes to sleeping away from her bed, producing ever-more disturbing illustrations and fashioning her own, shall we say unorthodox toys. Increasingly though, what would be a completely ordinary sense of a domineering person being not-quite-gone seems to cede to something more sinister. Members of the family start to see things, hear things – and everything Annie attempts to do in order to restore peace to the family seems to unearth more and more trauma, steadily shifting our perspective away from straightforward grief to an altogether more malignant set of supernatural forces at play, threatening the family from within and without.
I’m deliberately keeping my plot synopsis brief and a little vague here, as the way in which Hereditary unfolds deserves to be appreciated with as open a mind as possible. It’s unlikely that I’m spoilering by relating to the supernatural elements, though, I hope; so, this is a supernatural horror through and through, where the afterlife is more of a parallel world than a one-way destination, and where its inmates can harbour very, very sinister designs on the living. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself surprised, I think. I’ve seen the film proudly described as ‘this generation’s Exorcist’, or words to that effect, but that seems an odd comparison to make, unless we’re painting in very broad strokes. It’s far closer to the malignity of The Witch, or indeed the assault-by-wicked-forces seen in Drag Me To Hell, though with less of the humour. Although, even Hereditary has its lighter moments. It lobs in a few bong jokes, and some of the family meltdowns grow so hysterical that they verge on black comedy, as do a few of the film’s shockingly graphic moments.
What Hereditary also has, to its detriment, is a rather large lull during its middle act which I really feel dissolved some of the initial impact of the earliest scenes. It’s a frequent complaint from me, but then it’s a frequent issue: Hereditary runs for over two hours. A good twenty or so minutes of that feels borderline redundant, even given the excellent performances on offer throughout the film, in particular from the eerie Milly Shapiro and Wolff as the contested, desperate Peter. This also means that, as the film moves into its raucous final act, it feels like a lurch, and also hurries through some of the film’s much-needed (and very creepy) exposition, when I would have liked to allow some of these tantalising scenes to rest on my eye for longer. The gear shift into more and more grisly fare will also rest uneasily with some viewers, though it would be rather fun to make a list of the goriest scenes from the film and ask certain people to defend why these constitute ‘elevated horror’ in Hereditary, but would be somehow beneath contempt in a mere ordeal horror…
Hereditary is not a film without fault, then, though on the whole I found it a well-wrought and engaging supernatural story, showcasing an incredible amount of confidence on the part of writer/director Ari Aster – who to date has only directed short films of a rather different stripe. He’s certainly reached for new ways to besiege the family here, blending supernatural and occult lore with loathsomely graphic set pieces, all culminating in an impressive meld of horror tropes. Incidentally, it’s also a pleasure to see a trailer which piques your interest without giving away the whole bloody story. See this in the cinema if you can.
Hereditary is on general release in the UK now.