For Halloween itself I decided to revisit the best horror movie of the year, and one of the best of all time. I saw Hereditary (2018) opening day during it's theatrical release, and left the theater, stunned, amazed, and possibly a bit traumatized. There's one image in the film that fused onto my retinas, so that every time I closed my eyes for days after i saw the movie it was there. I can still conjure it forth with too much ease.
Without getting too much into the plot and spoiling this film, which I saw only knowing what I'd seen in the trailer, the film is pretty much about coping with grief. In this case a maternal figure with a complicated relationship to her daughter and grandchildren dies, and the surviving members of the family watch their lives unravel after that. There are suggestions of inherited mental illness, and for much of the film the viewer is made to wonder if that might be all there is to what's transpiring on screen, until one scene happens, and you know for sure.
Writer/Director, Ari Aster, makes one hell of a feature film debut with this. Everything about this movie is pretty perfect, compositions, the often time excruciating pacing, the music by Colin Stetson, the foreshadowing, art direction and cinematography are all top notch. What really sells this movie though are the performances, especially the four leads who really display some emotionally traumatized characterizations.
I saw this movie with a friend who will watch much more extreme material than I will, and afterwards he declared he was going to have nightmares for a week. This movie may be more intense than some people can handle, but it is really worth the experience.
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