Hereditary Or Audiences Ruin Everything

Viewed in the Theater

 

People Suck

Before I start talking about the quality of the movie “Hereditary”, I need to discuss my theater experience because, unlike many of the movies I usually watch, I actually saw this one in a movie theater.

 

And….This was the worst theater experience of my life.  I say that with no exaggeration. The crowd was just awful: they were laughing during the tense parts,  mimicking the sounds people were making on screen, the always annoying: talking during the film, and the person behind me was kicking the back of my chair. It was just a mess. And this wasn’t just one or two people, this was a decent section of the crowd participating in these actions. It was upsetting and disheartening to see so many people just not care about ruining the times of other moviegoers who are actually interested in watching the movie.

Rant over, on to the actual movie:

Hereditary is a film about what happens to a family, the Grahams, after Annie Graham’s mother passes away. This puts a lot of pressure on the family, particularly Annie who had a troubled relationship with her mother, and Charlie, Annie’s daughter, who had a very strong bond with her grandmother.

That is as much as I am willing to say regarding the plot because this is one of those horror movies, or movies in general really, where audiences should go in knowing as little as they possibly can about the movie in order for it to have its maximum impact. So now I will discuss as much as I can about the movie while skirting around exactly what happens in it.

 

I hope I’m up to the task.

 

The majority of the film plays out as a twisted family drama and succeeds beautifully in that regard, every conflict that arises is natural and believable and this really has to do more with the performances in the film than the writing of it per se.

 

Milly Shapiro plays Charlie Graham, a very creepy kid who is dealing with a lot of issues, and she does it very well. I am not a fan of creepy kid movies generally but this is probably the best in that regard. Toni Collette, who plays Annie Graham, gives 110% as the new matriarch of the Graham family and her performance is this wonderful mish-mash of fear, guilt, grief, conviction and anger. Annie Graham, like the rest of her family, is a tragically and fundamentally flawed human being and it is those flaws that made her so fascinating to watch.

 

Gabriel Byrne and Alex Wolff, playing Annie’s husband and son (Steve and Pete), aren’t quite as interesting to watch onscreen as Collette but that isn’t a critique of their performances, as they are both excellent in their roles, just maybe not quite as good as Collette is in hers. Alex Wolff as Pete in particular was almost (yet not quite) a match for Collette, as his performance was incredibly expressive and felt genuinely emotional as the heart wrenching events unfold around him. Compared to those two, however, Gabriel Byrne gave an almost understated performance as Annie’s husband Steve, with him being, almost certainly intentionally, somewhat emotionally distant and not as expressive. All of these characters clash in believable and exciting ways and that helps make the drama feel realistic and engaging.

 

Sources of Horror

The horror of the film tends to come mainly from the family drama and that gives Hereditary a slow burn pace with a great sense of atmosphere. There aren’t really any jumpscares, maybe one or two, so the horror tends to arise from disturbing discussions and visuals that we see, and no spoilers but there are quite a few disturbing images. There were so many things I also liked about this film but can’t get into because of spoilery reasons so I will just say that this movie avoids genre cliches that many other films stumble over, there were so many scenes where I thought I knew what was going to happen and then something genuinely unexpected occurred and took the story in a different direction than I thought it was going.

I can’t get much more into what I liked about the film without explaining things that should be seen with no warning so I will just finish by saying that Hereditary breathes new life into a classic subgenre of horror films and no matter how terrible the audience, it is definitely a film worth seeing in theatres. But seriously, I would recommend seeing it either late at night or early in the morning on an off day to avoid those jerks.

 

And now on to the Spoilers

It is almost impossible to analyze the movie without discussing specific plot points and events that are not obvious upon seeing the trailer, so from here on out this review will contain spoilers.

 

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The reason I didn’t get into the plot much in the above review is mainly because the plot takes several surprise turns which altered the course of the film completely.  Also, if I were to mention specific scenes out of context, then they probably wouldn’t make any sense.

 

In the beginning…

It seemed like the movie was going to be a movie about this creepy kid, Charlie, a child whose very name foreshadows events that will become important much later. Charlie is a loner, she doesn’t have any friends nor does she speak very much but she seems to enjoy drawing and chocolate. I had seen the trailer for this film and assumed that Charlie would be possessed by the spirit of the dead grandmother and this would cause this huge family rift and I was shocked when this turned out to not be the case at all. We see a bit of Charlie being creepy and some of her being emotionally distressed that her grandmother has died but we don’t spend a ton of time with Charlie because she ends up dying horribly at the end of the first act of the movie.

Charlie’s death, and the visceral nature of it, sets up the remaining plot of the movie, wherein the family drama is caused by the whole family, but Annie and Pete in particular, bouncing between grief, anger, self blame and guilt, and this leads to arguments, family tension and seances performed in an attempt to make contact with the spirit of Charlie. All typical family stuff.

 

During this time Annie and Pete are both suffering differing kinds of mental breakdowns with Annie becoming manic, angry and desperate while Pete seems to lose himself in a guilt driven haze where he enters an almost dreamlike state during his day to day activities. He loses interest in the girl he attempted to flirt with, appears wide eyed and blank, and is often crying during scenes where he isn’t arguing with his mother. The crying is something in particular that struck me as interesting as it is rare for male characters, even young ones, to openly cry and express emotions this way in film. This struck me as an exceptionally honest portrayal of how a young man would express grief at an incredibly emotionally disturbing event, especially because he isn’t talking to anyone about his issues.

Both Annie and Pete are clearly in emotional distress, and it is heavily implied that this may be due to the mental disorders which run through the family, either because of or in addition to the horrible emotional trauma that they both experienced. Things like this running through families is a clear and present theme as we are told at the beginning of the film that Annie’s family has an extensive history with serious mental illness. One of the big questions in the movie is whether or not spirits are attempting to contact this family or if they are just hallucinating and thinking that they saw something that wasn’t there.

On the issue of mental health one thing that must be discussed is the role of Annie’s husband, Steve. While all these things are happening, while Annie is losing her mind and nurturing a growing resentment toward everyone else in her family, while Pete is barely able to function and spends most of his time crying, we never see Steve doing anything to try and help the situation. Now it would be tempting to argue that curing mental illness is beyond him and he can’t do anything, but that just rings hollow as there are many things that he could do to help his family members who are clearly suffering and falling apart around him. In a movie about mental disorders, using ghosts as a metaphor, it is hard to read these actions as anything but a satirical look at how society treats mental health.

To be fair to Steve though, I am not singling him out. The entire cast of characters is a beautifully flawed jumble of people trying their best to cope with an incredibly bad situation, each in their own distinct way.

It just so happens that I judge Steve harshly because he seems to be the most lucid in this situation, although he could be intentionally presented in this way as a method of tricking people like me who keep looking at family situations in “problem solving” mode. It is easy to say as a viewer, “Oh I would have done this differently and this differently and this differently.” But it is a bit harder to step back and watch this kind of blameless chaos unfold.

That is the real genius of the film though, seeing this tragedy unfurl when the bad decisions people make feel rational and when it seems like there are no good options available. The movie questions whether daily life can ever be okay again after what has happened to this family.

No more spoilers because even if you know the initial twist and a few plot points there is just so much that has to be seen to be believed, so many genuinely disturbing visuals and piercing performances. The tension ratchets up beautifully and reaches a truly haunting climax that harkens back to classic horror cinema while also bringing a unique and modern feeling to it. This film just gets stronger and stronger in my head the more I’ve been thinking about it and discussing it and that is about the highest praise I can give.