Movie Review: Hereditary (English)

In the vein of indie, arthouse horror flicks like The Witch, The Babadook and We Are Still Here, comes yet another creepy, deliciously disturbing tale of supernatural dread and psychological unravelling. Mind you, watching Hereditary, Ari Aster's directorial debut, is unlike any other. An experience so shocking and unsettling, it's all the more surprising how it steers clear of conventions. Backed by first rate storytelling, dreamlike cinematography (Pawel Pogorzelski) and a pulse-pounding music score (Colin Stetson), Hereditary delves deep into the psyches of the Graham family (Steve, Annie and their children Peter and Charlie), exploring themes of grief, loss and coping with trauma, while dialling up the chills in ways that's intense, emotionally visceral and violent, before the bloodletting lets loose a torrent of horrors that's both deeply unnerving and terrifying beyond words.

Hereditary starts off pretty normally enough, until it isn't. And then things begins to get weird quickly, the days turning into nights, and nights turning into days in an instant, as if they were controlled with a switch, as if it were a stage set for something inevitably unpleasant, the characters mere pawns in a game that's beyond their control (one that acts as a neat parallel to Annie's obsession with designing scarily real miniature dioramas), like as if they were some sort of sacrificial lambs primed up for slaughter. Tragedy is often used to open the door to supernatural, but Aster takes it a notch higher, crafting a film that's not built on jump scares, but letting the evil speak for itself, showing what happens when cracks in a family are left unhealed, the intentionally hurtful things they say to one another, inflicting damage that is impossible to be undone, all because they are in such great pain that they need to see someone else hurting even worse. Perspective-bending, raw, chillingly surreal and top lined by fantastic performances, Hereditary is a nightmarish ride of demonic devolution that's nerve-wracking from start to finish.