Ok, who wants to be unsettled? Do you prefer your horror straight up or with a dash of the willies? For those who need a little bit more than “monster bad, run!” might I suggest Hereditary, a film which didn’t go for a whole lot of exposition but instead challenged the lost path of atmosphere to create the necessary horror.
How does one go about creating the mood of a horror film? Hereditary held a clinic on the subject folding and unfolding the following elements:
- Keep the action slow and quiet. In a good mood movie, the audience will be louder than the screen for most of the film.
- Explain nothing. The girl brings a bar of chocolate to grandma’s funeral – well of course she does. Why wouldn’t she?
- Keep the slow burn soundtrack on “simmer” and use sparingly, only to accentuate a moment after a reaction.
- Show a disturbing visual or two – an entire nest of ants swarming a severed human head. Yeah, that will keep you awake at night.
- Hint at potentially awful things – anaphylactic shock … overbearing parenting … one-way love … lies involving motivation.
Repeat one or more of the above as necessary.
Acting can be key to a mood movie; here, the entire cast behaves as if lines were crossed years ago – lines that can neither be uncrossed nor discussed. Yes, these elements are not meant for a normal crowd. But, and I’m totally serious here … who wants conventional horror? Who is that person?
There’s something wrong with 13-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro). I can’t put a finger on it exactly – face? Demeanor? Attitude? Not sure. Of course, if we couldn’t tell before, the part where Charlie snips off the head of a dead bird for personal use might be a clue. The family treats as normal Charlie pulling an Augustus Gloop at Nana’s funeral; they have bigger problems. One being that Annie (Toni Collette) transforms her eulogy into a laundry list of ways in which mom sucked. Gee, sounds like we’re missing out with grandma gone, huh? Forget parenting Charlie, Annie has her own very deep issues.
BTW, we are almost twenty years removed from The Sixth Sense and Toni Collette is still parenting a child a similar age as in that film.
Trying to pull one over on mom, Peter (Alex Wolff) represents a high school drugs-and-alcohol party as something resembling game night with friends. Annie insists Peter take the anti-social Charlie on the premise that it might be good for momma’s li’l pariah: Peter doesn’t want to be responsible for Charlie and Charlie doesn’t want to go. Nice coup, Peter; you’ve set up a lose-lose situation. At the party, Peter pushes Charlie towards cake while he scores a date with a bong. Allergic to nuts, Charlie soon has to be rushed to the hospital; she never gets there. Peter swerves to avoid an animal in the road and grazes a telephone pole at the exact moment Charlie has stuck her head out of the
car to breathe.
And this is the part where the film gets weird. Headless corpse in the car … Disembodied head by the side of the road … Peter goes to bed instead of facing the music. One might see the unusual in these moments; all I can say is Hereditary has a lot of movie left.
I’m telling you right now that from the dollhouse symbolism to the WTF?! climax, Hereditary is a film I didn’t understand very well. It reminded me most of 2017’s Mother! but that comparison is like saying Las Vegas is closer to Houston than it is to Buenos Aires. I can see from the title and Annie’s bizarre relationships with every family member that this film had a point to make about genetic degeneration; Annie clearly got her crazy from Nana. Does that mean that Peter is doomed as well? For me, the inherited component is not nearly as important as the study of atmosphere in the film. One way or another, this is the kind of film where you want to be reassured you can grab the leg of the person next to you for security. As I attended Hereditary alone, I can but hope the person next to me didn’t mind.
Genetics is mathematical dance
A science oft dismissed with a glance
If your father’s a tool
Is don’t mean that you’ll
There’s only a fifty percent chance
Rated R, 127 Minutes
Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Genre: What the Hell was that?!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Children of ambiance
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Children
