Hereditary Review

Hereditary (5/10)

Director: Ari Aster

Runtime: 127 Minutes

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Why are people calling this the scariest movie in years? Why is it being marketed as a horror? These are questions I left asking myself at the end of Hereditary. The debut movie by Ari Aster, Hereditary tries to be grisly and genuinely frightening and for me it never was. I'm not the biggest fan of subtle horror, nor am I a big fan of arthousr horror. This movie never had me on edge, even though the trailers leads you to believe it'll be extremely intense and have a grim atmosphere but it never does. This is where my biggest issue with the movie lies, there was a never a moment that I felt scared and all the moments that should have been intense weren't because I never felt like there was something to be afraid off. Maybe some people might consider this a good thing as the story keeps you guessing, I personally never got invested in the story enough to care.

I've heard this from a lot of other critics and I completely agree with them, the marketing for this movie was awful. It leads you to believe you're going into an intense horror movie. When in actuality you're walking into a drama, and a slow burner one at that. A lot of people might consider this off putting and I can definetely see why. Going into this movie I pretty much knew I wasn't going to like it, I really did want to but I knew it didn't look like my type of horror movie. It reminded me a lot of The Witch and The Babadook, both movies that I really didn't like but the majority of critics loved. Give credit where it's due, the performances in this movie are outstanding. Toni Collette is brilliant as the mom stricken with grief at the death of her own mother. Alex Wolff gives his break out performance here and I truly do hope he starts to get recognised as an actor to be reckoned with. I hated his crying in the movie as it sounded ridiculous but the rest of the movie he is top notch. The movie also goes on for far to long, clocking in at a little over 2 hours it drags during act 2 and there were many scenes that lingered for far to long, not adding anything to the overall plot and could easily have been cut.

Overall I haven't got a whole lot to say about Hereditary. I feel people who like subtle horror, movies like The Babadook and The Witch then you'll definetely like this. Personally I don't think it's a great movie and if it wasn't for the stellar performances then I'd probably give it lower than a 5. I went with two people who loved this movie so I might just be on my own when saying if wasn't a great movie. I'd definetley say give it a watch but be prepared that you're going into a drama/thriller and not a horror.