Hereditary (2018)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Annie Graham	Toni Collette
Steve Graham	Gabriel Byrne	½
Peter Graham	Alex Wolff
Charlie Graham	Milly Shapiro	½
Joan	Ann Dowd

Review

Ari Aster is the name of the young first-time writer and director of this stylistically assured and in many ways accomplished horror flick about a family disintegrating in the wake of a tragic death. A history of mental illness is juxtaposed against some mysterious forces. And as the mother, played by a totally invested Toni Collette, dives deeper and more headlong into the substance, Aster keeps us on the edge of our seats through fairly subdued allusions, solid craftsmanship and his skill for drama. This is a film for film students and movie buffs; a film that is well aware of its predecessors and place in the timeline of film history, but which has just about enough original ideas to feel fresh. Despite all these promising elements, Hereditary is also a disappointment. When it becomes clear that Aster moves his story away from the human psyche and into a fairly specific but worn aspect of cultural history that allows easy answers to almost any narrative predicament, the film starts to drag and the scares dry up. The overexplanatory ending is probably meant to give you the ultimate chill, but cannot escape its antiquated roots which make it feel outdated and irrelevant. There is some fine acting by the cast, who clearly appreciated and revelled in the solid groundwork of Aster's story. He is definitely a talent, despite this film's shortcomings.