Hereditary
Directed by Ari Aster
Starring Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, and Ann Dowd
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
[rating: 4/5]
Toni Collette has a face for horror. With her intense saucer-like eyes and long face, she looks haunted. It worked to startling effect in The Sixth Sense and she fitted the action like a glove in the domestic shocker The Boys but for the new movie Hereditary, directed with expert control by Ari Aster, she is made to order. No other actress today could’ve played Annie Graham, the mother of a family under siege. Collette’s physicality works so perfectly here and at year’s end, hers will be listed as one of the finest performances of the year.
It starts off sadly. Annie’s antagonistic mother Ellen has just died and she, her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their son Peter (Alex Wolff) and their curious daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro, what a face!) are setting off to the funeral. There Annie delivers the eulogy and comments about the many unfamiliar faces in the congregation. How bereaved are they? The Grahams seems curiously disconnected from the proceedings, even relieved, especially the slightly touched Charlie who is grinned at menacingly by a handsome blond man. Something is askew. Days later Steve learns Ellen’s graveside has been vandalised and Annie, a sleepwalker, is convinced she’s seen her mother’s ghost in her studio. She attends a grief support group where she talks about her shizophrenic brother, her mother’s morbid beliefs, and the love/hate relationship they endured. Soon after, she meets Joan (Ann Dowd) who remembers Annie from the support group, empathises with her grieving, and introduces her to the power of séances.
You’ll be hearing a lot about this movie. Collette’s electrifying essay of a woman slowly coming apart while dealing with intrusive spirits and haunted by her mother’s bizarre tendencies is a wonder to behold, but the slow grinding sense of the unknown that hangs above the film delivers a wonderfully prickly sensation. The setting is key. The remote family home, complete with a creepy attic, is set on the edge of a forest (Hereditary was filmed in Utah) and seems to be cursed with shadows. And what of Annie’s studio where she works on scale models? Dollhouses haven’t been this creepy since Robert Duvall landed in one in The Twilight Zone. Every setting feels ominous and Aster baits the hook like a pro. No doubt, some Thing is slowly and determinedly circling the family.
Aster makes an impressive debut here and lays the groundwork slowly. Better still, he leaves out the painfully obvious scares that Leigh Whannell and James Wan have shamelessly built their questionable careers on. Rosy cheeked dolls and sudden jumps backed up by deafening bleats from the soundtrack are missing in action here. I grant you, Aster may have borrowed pieces from classic horror films (they come off like a salute) but he’s stirred it up to a unique vision. With a twisting narrative that unfurls in a long, seductive tease, he’s given us the moodiest of mood pieces. The challenge here is to key into the reality of their lives and Aster dares us to guess what that is. The very best horror films are built on sheer dread and, of course, knowing there’s no escape. You know, like Rosemary’s Baby…
