I must admit I've tended to stick with old school horror films over the years, as you might have noticed from all the blog posts about Hammer and Tigon amongst other things. Still, I step into the modern world every so often to take a peek... even if the paranormal preoccupations of contemporary cinema is a bit off putting to an old relic like myself. Too many CGI mouths and eyeballs for my taste y'know. Maybe that's why I like Hereditary so much, or why some viewers might find it boring. It's a slow methodical chiller that harkens back to the likes of Don't Look Know and various other essential nightmare fuel experiences. The stuff that's not super scary in the traditional sense but feels weird and disturbing long after the credits roll.
I've probably written this silly preamble before... as if dark forces are at work pushing me towards the inevitable. Maybe I'm just obsessed with creepy films that offer more in terms of mood than they do simple jump scares. It's a dark and sinister story which at first seems to be more about the everyday grind of a dysfunctional family. The weird girl, the angst ridden teenager, the distant parents. The dead grandma. The bizarre drawn out social hall meetings. As the title suggests there's a problem in the clan being passed down through each generation, whether it's some sort of mental illness or just a lot of bad vibes and a bunch of questionable parenting techniques.
But there are signs that things are not quite what they seem, and from the outset there's a whole lot of creeping dread and sinister camera work. Even the score is incredibly ominous with a quiet buzzing layer of noise building up in the background as the drama gets more intense. This all comes to a head during the big shock sequence finale but for the most part it's just a story about loss, in particular death in the family. At least on the surface. There are a lot of strange skeletons in closets, some which are openly discussed and others which are just hinted at every so often. Visually it's all very clean and crisp but the way each moment is edited into the next creates a kind of surreal tone at times amidst all the mundane household clashes.
As things go on there's a lot of imagery hinting at the artifice of the situation; that strings are being pulled from the shadows. Annie (Toni Collette) is an artist working on a variety of gallery projects involving miniature homes while her youngest Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is also into drawing and building. Annie may just be using this as a way of dealing with past trauma or some of the weird issues surrounding her recently deceased mother, and Charlie could just be following in her footsteps. But the repeated perspectives suggesting that each scene is a carefully constructed moment being watched by a model maker gives it all an uncomfortable layer of tension that goes being a handful of neat zooming scale changing effects.
There are more directly supernatural scenes as things go on however, and it's not all just slight of hand and subtle editing tricks. It's actually a fairly brutal and suspense filled story that drops in just enough ghostly apparitions and flashing candle flames before dropping out the floor completely and letting everything fall into madness. Your mileage may vary but it's a great mixture of new material and tried and tested downbeat 1970s horror, something which works wonders for both the pacing and the shock value. Visually it slides between murky grey darkness and fiery reds and oranges, slowing ramping towards the latter as Annie finds out what her mother had been up to and what her kids are in for in that tree house everyone keeps highlighting.
Beyond the technical expertise on show this is also a great character movie, with Molly Shapiro and Alex Wolff as her brother Peter getting plenty of moments to shine. Weird unsettling moments. Gabriel Byrne as their father and the voice of reason amidst all the craziness is also great. But this is undoubtedly Toni Collette's movie as she goes through all kinds of gear shifts, whether it's distant wife, outraged parent or simply freaked out believer. It's a performance with range and scale that feels bigger than the low budget of the film, and the millions of still images out there without context don't do it justice. It holds the drama together when things get really outlandish and it feels both over the top and grounded in ways that are totally believable.
It's a tough one to go into without describing the whole plot, but ultimately the few mentions of the powers of darkness lurking behind the scenes I've noted are enough. Annie's big meltdown at the coping with grief meeting hints at bizarre family disputes and mysterious deaths in ways that are a perfect setup for what's to come, even before the leaflets about spiritualism arrive in her letter box. It's a dark and often ambiguous movie, until it's not. But that's part of the pleasure of watching it all unfold like a perfectly crafted doll's house full of miniature doors and secret messages. It's not for everyone and if you're expecting an occult expert to arrive and talk about haunted basements you're in for a bad time. But this is a definite recommendation for fans of odd and eerie films that take their time; stories in which all the weird ingredients are perfectly measured.
4/5
BONUS REVIEW
UPGRADE (2018)
Onto another small budget movie that pushes all my buttons, let's quickly talk about this tale of artificial intelligence and broken limbs. This isn't a big success by any means but it does offer a lot of things I'm always down for, whether it's the mixture of high-tech-low-life visual elements or story beats that blur the line between body horror and science fiction. It's not the all out beat-em-up action thrill ride that teasers might have hinted at, but it does offer a few tasty bone crunching treats along the way after Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) finds himself in a wheelchair after a particularly nasty incident involving a self driving car and a gang of thugs.
Luckily he's an old school guy building classic vehicles in a futuristic world and his latest client is a technology mogul who can help him walk again. The timing of the crash and his meeting with this guy is not suspicious at all... But to cut a long story short he's back on his feet after having a chip installed in his spine, a gadget that houses a talking machine intelligence that can help him hunt down the men who put him in the hospital. There's not much going on in terms of new story material and there are no prizes for guessing how this all ends, but there is a certain satisfying feeling watching him go to work. Particularly when his new A.I. partner 'STEM' takes over his limbs and does the heaving lifting.
There's just enough neat near future design work on show to sell this as a plausible world and there are a lot of typical harsh primary coloured lights to make the scenery pop. The visual effect enhanced cityscapes also help fill out the background details when most of the visuals are not so futuristic. A lot of this stuff has been done before on film and there are even nods to recent video-games, but it's an entertaining ride while it lasts. There are no real standout performances but everyone does a good job with Green looking suitably confident and confused when appropriate and STEM (Simon Maiden) gives a wry turn every so often in a manner somewhere between HAL and KITT. It's nothing special but it's slick, it's often fun and it's sometimes gruesome. Which is just enough.
3/5
