Director Ari Aster
Starring Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne
Rated MA
Score 5.5/6

After the family matriarch passes away, a grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences, and begin to unravel dark secrets.

I’ve never thought of myself as very big fan of the horror genre, though that being said I wont refuse to watch a horror movie simply because it’s a horror movie. So, this is my excuse as to why I waited for Hereditary’s DVD release before sitting down to watch it.

For those of you who did not know Hereditary is the first feature film from writer/director Ari Aster who has delivered. Hereditary has a slow creepy burn to it and really doesn’t became an overtly ‘horror’ until towards the end of the second act when all the family drama has well and truly sucked you in. I would also like to note that of the movies that I have watched over the past couple of years Hereditary has probably had me squirming in my seat the most. I just loved Pawel Pogorzelski’s camera work especially in conjunction with how the movie was edited took some seemingly mundane shots in such an outside the box direction with how camera moved, that heightened the movie to the point that while sitting down to write my review for Hereditary the day after watching it, I’m struggling with the phrasing for this sentence. I also found that how the miniatures where used to be very interesting, particularly the introduction of Peter and Steve portrayed by Alex Wolff and Gabriel Byrne has left me wondering if the entire plot of the movie was some kind of delusion.

Milly Shapiro who played the daughter Charlie, wow that was one creepy little girl. Shapiro is such a talented actress, it turns out this is her first feature film I really hope to see her cast in more movies. I was a little surprised to see that Gabriel Byrne was cast in this movie. Alex Wolff was cast brilliantly opposite Toni Collette and the fractured mother/son relationship they brought to the screen certainly was a driving force of the movie. Toni Collete was the focus of my new most disturbing scene from a movie.