Hereditary

I was recently at a Sunflower Bean and Broncho show this past Saturday night, which is inherently hipster within itself, but while there, I ran into a group of scrubs whose eye roll inducing conversation was so ridiculous that it made me wish that they could immediately be burned at the stake as I sat there and watched while joyously munching on my avocado toast. Why do they deserve such an awful fate, you ask? Well as one girl was knocking back her PBR and talking to some barista who just moved here from Portland, she casually adjusted the 1940’s bandana that she was wearing on her head and said "You know what, I should totally go to Voodoo Fest this year. I mean, I kind of have to since my great aunt is Anne Rice."

Anne Rice? Freaking Anne Rice?!?!? You’re not only bragging about being related to one of the worst horror/goth writers of the past century but you’re using it as justification to go to spend hundreds of dollars you supposedly don’t have because you choose to not sell out and work a 9 to 5? That’s like me saying "You know, I should totally celebrate Juneteenth this year! I mean, I am kind of down with that new Jaden Smith poem." No, me liking the worst Smith of the Smith family is not grounds for or gives me any rights to being a superior Black man. If anything, it should excommunicate me from the race.

But this is where horror is these days; someone like Anne Rice has somehow garnered legendary status. And films like It Follows (I always hear Bush’s Swallowed in my head when I talk about that movie), Cabin in the Woods, and The Witch are all hailed as being the next big thing in the genre when in reality they’re just films that were written by some coed who just recently went on a John Carpenter bender. Which on the surface sounds kind of tight, that is until you realize that there will only be one John Carpenter.

So naturally when I saw and heard all of the buzz around Hereditary, I was skeptical. I was just waiting for all of these lame references to the 80’s that no one remembers and possibly even a guest appearance by Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China). Which again, the more I write about this, the fresher it sounds. But thankfully none of this happened. Hereditary was actually a fairly fresh take on the genre even if it did run a little too long.

Everyone knows that horror films should not exceed 95-100 minutes even if they do include gratuitous nude scenes, which this one does not by the way. But this film clocks in right around 127 minutes which is something you normally expect to see when watching a Kevin Costner film about baseball or puking at the sight of a pudgy Russell Crowe wearing a super snug sailor costume while stumbling around drunk on a boat. Why don’t you lose some weight, fatty! You’re a movie star! Now I get that he was taking his time in letting both the story and the characters develop but you can only use so many camera angles to keep one interested as a mother cries for the fortieth time over her dead relatives.

And speaking of director Ari Aster’s filming style, his clever use of the camera did add another dimension to this film. In the place of relying on the lazy and distracting "shaky cam" to add suspense to some rather intense scenes, he instead chose the route of almost making the camera its own character in certain spots. It felt as though you were watching the story unfold through the eyes of an independent party who was at times freaking out over what was happening and at other times grieving alongside the seemingly cursed family. This was never more apparent than in the film’s most memorable scene; the night of the car accident which involved the two teenage children of Annie (Toni Collette) and Steve (Gabriel Byrne).

After the tragic and horrific accident, the camera just sits there and focuses on Peter for quite some time while you visibly see him internalize what just happened and how his life will never be the same again. He can either accept it and deal with it or he can just choose to move on, pretend that nothing really happened and hope for the best. He unfortunately chose the worst of the two. This is one of the realest and most honest moments I have seen in any genre of film in a long time and it is still messing with me today.

Sure there are some creepy scenes that involve séances, apparitions, witchcraft, and even temporary possession but that’s stuff you’ve already seen before. And trust me when I say that the film gets over the top with all of this in the story’s third act but what will stick with you the most is the acting and the storytelling that I was just spent so much time complaining about. While he could have cut out at least 20 minutes of it, Collette and Alex Wolff’s (Peter) ability to make you connect with and empathize with the characters in this sometimes ridiculous story is what makes this film so special. You hate, love, cheer for, and root against them all in the same two hour span and that’s why you feel as though you’ve been on such an exhausting journey by the film’s end. And I cannot tell you the last horror film that made me feel that way.

Hereditary is definitely flawed but boy was it good. I give it a rating of FRESH but I am on my way to Bible Study right now because I need some Jesus in my life after seeing this film!