the familial trauma chiller HEREDITARY

keep it in here....keep it all in here, forever. never let it out.

*cluck*

ooh, this looks good.

When can we talk about Hereditary?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!??!

I saw it last night. Haven't quite stopped thinking about it since. Toni Collette was amazing. I understood the plot on a surface level but wonder what it really ~means~, esp the song that played during the closing credits. Extremely incongruous and was a powerful emotional catalyst. I would see this movie again!

The score was, as predicted, well done.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 9 June 2018 15:12 (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am going to try and see it next week. Whenever a movie is presented as the scariest thing ever, it is usually a boilerplate jump-scare movie like A Quiet Place, or a really well-made and acted film that is not terribly scary, like The Babadook. From what little I know about it this seems more like the latter, a psychologically scary art film, something to think about, usually about grief.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 9 June 2018 15:58 (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not scary -- it's intense (more so for some people than others) and it leaves a long-lingering creep that suffuses daily activities with ominous vibes. i wouldn't say "scary" tbh

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 9 June 2018 17:45 (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hereditary is good stuff. Not perfect, for sure, not all the details quite fit together, but easily really good. Go see it.
It's closer to the The Babadook, but significantly better crafted imo.

― Nhex, Sunday, 10 June 2018 03:03 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A couple of shots/sequences definitely bordered on scary. All of it in the last half-hour.

It's definitely in that VVitch / Babadook zone but not *quite* as good as either (though significantly better than a lot of other recent horror flicks). I'd have lopped off 15-20 minutes.

OBLIQUE SPOILERS

While there's obviously still subtext to be drawn and all that, I actually appreciated that at a certain point it's like, no, this is why shit's going down and it's not a metaphor lol

― Simon H., Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:15 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bummer that it's not as good as those others, it's been preceded by such high praise

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:22 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's still pretty good! (Though I'm not surprised audiences hate it.)

― Simon H., Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:22 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why shit's going down and it's not a metaphor lol

idk, i still think it's a metaphor -- it was comforting to movie viewers to know [spoiler about the certain point] because it got them through the harrowing nature of the situation, but i don't think of it as "a story" as much as a distillation of the horrors of heredity, which we all grapple with to some degree
i certainly felt massive lingering horror as i looked at boxes of personal/family ephemera the morning after i saw it

like A Quiet Place was family-centered horror of a narrow scope with one family and clear monsters; Hereditary seemed to be a more all-encompassing look at the horror of family and things that are hereditary

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:37 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...or just a witch story with bonus family horror content
whichever you prefer

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:43 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My wife has had multiple friends call it a hot mess, which surprised me.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:49 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk people are going to recoil at what disturbs them, and there were plenty of disturbing ideas and images in this movie

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:56 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

recoil *from rather

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, 10 June 2018 17:56 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had a suspicion this was less "scary" than it was "intense" (or some other more psychological equivalent).

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 10 June 2018 18:24 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people in my theater were complaining about the ending on the way out but i think the last 10-20 minutes are what take it from very good to best horror film i've seen in a long time.

(vague spoilers follow)

while i see where they're coming from it's annoying when people bring up the horror respectability politics angle of "oh, it's really a kitchen table family drama disguised as a horror film" and i think the fact that they really Went There with the ending is so great, you CAN have a brilliantly acted and shot story about family and heredity and grief that also has an insanely metal climax

― oiocha, Sunday, 10 June 2018 19:30 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah -- it's not disguised as a horror film, it is for sure a horror film

i think the fact that they really Went There with the ending is so great, you CAN have a brilliantly acted and shot story about family and heredity and grief that also has an insanely metal climax
agree, otm

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Sunday, 10 June 2018 19:47 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, yes, so metal! i liked that too.

― Nhex, Sunday, 10 June 2018 20:35 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the first half is intense/upsetting, the (better) second half is scary

― na (NA), Sunday, 10 June 2018 20:59 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I didn't find the Peter character to be reliable at all so the whole metal ending functions very well with the subtext of the film.

― Van Horn Street, Monday, 11 June 2018 01:33 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

honestly the movie should probably get its own thread - other recent horror flicks of note have

― Simon H., Monday, 11 June 2018 01:40 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't watch much horror lately, haven't seen Babadook, Witch, Quiet Place, etc., but went to Hereditary with my aspiring filmmaker son last night and we were both very impressed. Certainly not "scariest thing ever" but also certainly not "a hot mess" either. Many scenes will linger with me a long time.

― even in your onion (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 12 June 2018 16:07 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, and also, yes Toni Collette was amazing.

― even in your onion (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 12 June 2018 16:13 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I fucking loved hereditary

― U. K. Le Garage (wins), Thursday, 14 June 2018 15:33 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hereditary was great. Touched on so many of my childhood fears (& adult too I guess?), if I saw it as a kid I'd never sleep again

― badg, Thursday, 14 June 2018 16:44 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was gabriel byrne meant to be american in it?

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 14 June 2018 18:22 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I couldn’t figure that either. By the end of the film I’d decided no

― U. K. Le Garage (wins), Thursday, 14 June 2018 18:23 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, but I appreciated him as the most clueless/ineffectual/checked-out horror-movie dad since Peter Sarsgaard in Orphan

― Simon H., Thursday, 14 June 2018 18:24 (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol yeah. I really liked his performance in this, & even tho he was deliberately sidelined as someone outside of the hereditary mess looking in they gave him the breakdown moment in the car which I found really moving

― U. K. Le Garage (wins), Thursday, 14 June 2018 18:30 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Someone really should make a thread

― U. K. Le Garage (wins), Thursday, 14 June 2018 18:31 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Colin Stetson on handling the score:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/12/17451100/hereditary-composer-colin-stetson-interview

I didn’t know that was him, although I should have realised in the final scene at least

im not sure I'm going to watch this just based on the short film the director made several years ago which is the most fucked thing i think I've ever seen

spoilers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strange_Thing_About_the_Johnsons

This describes my approach to horror movies pretty accurately

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/6/11/17450110/hereditary-wikipedia-horror-movie-review

thank you for starting with my post!

i thought this movie was excellent and also enjoyed the heightened experience of watching it. the lingering effects have been pretty persistent but i consider that a strength and also a factor of one's idiosyncratic relationship with family/heredity/trauma. how long can this thread go without spoilers?!

there's one word i have typed and erased like 500x wrt this movie.

Spoil away imho

Yeah that’s one reason I thought we needed a dedicated thread, cause I wanna get into details

decapitation
discuss

I've seen my head from both sides now

omg that made me actually lol

This film really did a number on me - I was v hungover & had to chase it away with a couple of beers before/during the film but still. I went into it cold, knowing only that it was a hyped horror film, so was unprepared for the emotional rawness of it (& that rawness doesn’t go away even when the film gets gnarly)

Collette, dowd & the kid who plays Charlie should all get oscars

ppl i 'follow', and who like horror, were p underwhelmed mostly

The actor who played peter, his performance in the accident & aftermath scene, I was having palpitations

Some of his acting later, the crying in particular, seemed to skirt the limits of acceptability in a way that felt deliberate and interesting

Every minor character, even the lol teens, was so thoughtfully written and played. Idk a lot of the recent horror revival films are high-concept one-gag twilight zoney things, which is fine, but this feels so rich & thematically interesting and just, really well done. Some gorgeous compositions in this thing

i enjoyed this a lot and thought toni collette and the teenage boy were both fantastic in it
my one complaint is that it felt a little scattershot, with a lot of different imagery and ideas and references to past events being thrown out that didn't necessarily cohere or resolve

See what you’ve just described is basically my jam - an inflection is all the “connective tissue” I need - but I know what you mean: even with the emotional content, stuff like the miscarriage confession, which is HUGE, so much other stuff happens that I completely forgot about it until a few moment ago

Annie's monologue at the support group is so squirm-inducing and uncomfortable.

Omg yes, that and the eulogy doing so much heavy lifting for this whole fucked up history

This is a great film for horrified sympathy reaction shots, a good proportion of which come from joanie which complicates things lol

It is pretty amazing how quickly they blow by the whole "my brother committed suicide at 16 because my mom was possessing him with evil spirits" thing which of course was relevant

The pacing is really rushed sometimes for a 2hr movie. Maybe it should have been split into two 1.5 hr parts?

that's funny to me because I found the first 60-70 mins almost hilariously slow

Haha I just remembered “what language is even this?”

Yeah there's a lot of languid scenes and then there's "we gotta explain the paimon angle in a highlighted text in about 5 seconds"

I feel like there's also a missing third act where they realize their demon king is only interested in smoking pot and eating candy bars and clucking.

The wildly varying pace was a plus for me, v disorienting (and seemingly deliberately so)

Yeah same

I like that you think the whole thing will be a slow burn and then they just open the trapdoor

I was listening to the film comment podcast interview with the director and apparently the “slow” section was meant to be even longer/slower but they ended up cutting several slow tense domestic scenes for pacing’s sake

lol yeah 126 minutes was definitely pushing it already

Do we have any thoughts on the use of "Both Sides Now" (beyond the fact that my audience laughed)

i have been waiting for anyone to have more thoughts than i do!

my feelings are (in no order) this song -- and this version in particular --is
1) a powerful emotional catalyst -- and also an opportunity for stressed moviegoers to really let their fear-tears rip after that harrowing story (this is what happened to me, I started crying and it was totally beyond my control, regained my composure in the bathroom and felt like a choad)
2) that song is about the loss of innocence (right?) and gaining of understanding so maybe it was a comment on that?
3) twee musical comic relief?

i recognized it within about 3 seconds and was like wait -- what? -- and that's when i felt the waterfall start

i thought it was a brilliant choice but have no idea what it "means" to the filmmakers

I think those are all good takes. I don't have any further thoughts lol - other than I am considering a 2nd viewing

i looked it up and it was also used in Love Actually (which I found revolting and I don't think is related to this usage of the song)

maybe they're saying: secular family dysfunction, demonic cult, same thing? I haven't seen love actually, so maybe they had the same message.

love actually is about demonic cults and intense family trauma so i guess that makes sense

heh

I really liked it. A bit shaggy as many have noted, but extremely effective as a dread delivery device. It was refreshing to have the feeling (for most of the running time anyway) of not knowing where the movie was going.

It reminded me a bit of the (awesome) Korean horror flick The Wailing in its almost comical level of intensity and willingness to play with expectations.

Really liked a lot of this. As a sleepwalker I've not seen a more trueful portrayal of the confusion involved.

Your mom worshiped the devil and possessed you too??

>It reminded me a bit of the (awesome) Korean horror flick The Wailing in its almost comical level of intensity and willingness to play with expectations.

Oh man, I *loved* The Wailing. There were a couple of scenes late on which stayed with me a for a long time - the night time conversation with The Mysterious Woman and her promise, and the bit where the priest goes into the cave. I'll never look at a Minolta High-Matic the same way.

Did Joan put something in Annie's tea when she first went to visit her?

I think that's meant to be unclear.

I finally got to see this movie

From Charlie's death to the final sequence, every scene was a disappointment

So much hand-holding through easy-to-grasp myth-building

No way to trace the logic behind Annie's breakdown-- why did she decide to burn the book? no reason

Music ruled tho, I loved the placid approach to the final scene

The Charlie seance was one of the worst-acted/written/directed scene I've ever seen and reminded me why I typically avoid films starring Gabriel Byrne

lmao, I liked Byrne's cluelessness/inability to engage with the situation, like he couldn't access the movie he was in (purposely, I think)

That is Gabriel Byrne in every movie he's cast in

It's a mystery to me how that man gets any work

Ha, I think he's pretty frequently fine (particularly in In Treatment and Miller's Crossing) but I completely get just having a mental block to enjoying some actors. (for me this is Juliette Lewis)

Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't work out what Byrne's job/employment actually was in this film.

anyway yes the score was v good, and i did watch this at home

i really hated mandy, the score was cool though

that's cool it's not for everyone flops

yeah i don’t think you all are bad for liking it or anything; i latch onto characters and dialogue and plot, and it had essentially none of them. also saw it the week after a breakup which prob coloured the xp, whereas i saw hereditary whilst falling in love

as someone who liked both movies v much I think hereditary >> mandy is a defensible opinion

more than anything though I cannot recall a first feature in recent memory from a total unknown that made this much of an impact and I'm v curious to see what he does next

Maybe dont watch his vimeo short as it is even more disturbing than hereditary

Toni collette deserves an oscar nomination btw

She'll get one, I think.

peter's crying in this movie is kind of amazing, I didn't think there was a way to cry in a movie that I haven't heard before and that I would find startling and upsetting, the way it is when you actually encounter a person crying in real life

Alex Wolff's performance/screen presence was so unusual that I was surprised to discover he has a ton of credits already

btw Aster's followup is out in August so we can expect a trailer soon

another vote for hereditary >>>>>> mandy

I thought Mandy had some cheap nudge nudge wink wink elements, but hereditary was unique and inspired.

i would like to clarify that i didn't hate this, it just didn't go far enough for me. i wish it felt open-ended but it feels extremely closed off. this is a fine and ok thing for a movie to be but it frustrated the hell out of me. i will also say that endings adversely affect the way i think of the rest of a film. also in my initial post i did not clarify that i think the first 90 minutes of this are p terrific

mandy is a v unique and powerfully emotional movie for me so it's hard for me to not rise to its defense on every occasion lol

otherwise beyond visuals/score effectiveness i don't see much reason to think of both movies at the same time

there isn't -- i just put it out there because i really super enjoyed both of the movies, both of the scores, and two big symbiotic audiovisual experiences like that don't usually happen in one year, at least not for me. i really liked both of them. hereditary will stay with me more for the movie, mandy more for the score. we don't have to keep talking about mandy itt.

well this was traumatizing

Toni collette deserves an oscar nomination btw

She'll get one, I think.

also lol what universe are you guys living in where horror movies win Oscars

Last year?

I thought Shape of Water was a rom com

I guess they did give one to Jordan Peele so ya got me there

Collette will def be nominated

She was nominated for Sixth Sense, too, iirc her only previous Oscar nomination. I guess she should do horror more often?

Natalie Portman won Best Actress for Black Swan

damn toni went sicko mode

tee hee

shoulda really got an oscar nod here

yeah she's phenomenal in this

http://wtfbabe.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/hereditary-55-gif-blue-light-special-wtf-watch-the-film-saint-pauly1.gif

yea wtf
Early summer release + horror = long way to go for a nom
Still tho

Wow, I managed to go this whole time without getting any spoilers about this movie (nothing beyond someone making a joke sometime back about a decapitation), so went in more or less blind. And boy, did I not expect it to go full batshit! From Rosemary's Baby to The Witch, I love movies where there is no twist and what you think is happening is what's happening. This one, though, for most of it I watched it as a kind of cross between The Sixth Sense and Manchester by the Sea, but then towards the end, when it goes nuts ... hats off, crazy filmmakers.

Toni Collette was great in this. Everyone the boy, maybe, who seemed a little too ... old?

damn Manchester by the Sea comparison is OTM

Well, this was a bit of fun.

Just to continue the discussion here instead of the other thread, since I haven't seen the new movie yet, I do agree that Rosemary's Baby is more successful. Which in and of itself is kind of duh, because Rosemary's Baby is a masterpiece ratified by decades of reverence (and reference). But I do agree that Hereditary gets a little undisciplined toward the end. Or perhaps too disciplined? It's such a bigger, more open world than RB, and (or so) it's established pretty early on that something supernatural is up. What it kind of rushes into at the end is the resolution that the family has been set up into a situation, yeah, more obscure than, oh, it's Satanists, a concept/threat everyone kind of gets. But Hereditary introduces all these weird rules and stuff that have to be explained into the movie's conclusion, but by then we've moved so far beyond "this is all in her head" that it gets kind of ... impatient and off, especially for a movie whose running time is pretty much half people turning around slowly and staring in terror at something off screen. Still effective, though!

I just saw this with no knowledge except that it was vaguely horror. Wow, the sucker punch of the decapitation just comes out of no where to such an extent that it kind of took the next third of the movie to recover. Possibly because of this, the middle annoyed me as Collette sort of spastically lurches from scene to scene in repressed horror trying to resolve the situation in dumb ways (sceance, etc.), which I guess I get in light of her grasping to deal with a terrible situation. Really liked the last twenty minutes when things just went full on crazy. So many creepy touches like Collette sawing her own head off to her body floating away to the corpses being posed in worship to the end song.

The grave tension of Collette and Byrne with the book resolving with Byrne suddenly bursting into flames took me by surprise and I started laughing out loud!

Finally watched this, on Amazon Prime, and regardless of a lot of other thoughts and feelings I just can't think of another recent movie that kept me so constantly off-kilter. The use of colors, the instant day-to-night transitions, the instant location changes, it just all combined to keep me feeling uncomfortable and wrong-footed. Were the establishing exteriors actually tilt-shifted miniatures, or were they just shot that way to strengthen the metaphor regarding the miniatures that Annie makes?

I kinda want to watch it again, to see if Joan is visible at the funeral at the beginning.

I did love how in all of the early scenes, up through the dinner scene, the only way Toni Collette and the son could talk to each other was by asking each other questions, without ever actually answering or making a statement.

I wish genre movies didn't get overlooked, she really did deserve an Oscar nod.

Again, genre movies don't get as overlooked as one might assume. Get Out won best screenplay the previous year, and was nominated for a ton of other things. And Toni Collette's single previous Oscar nomination was for The Sixth Sense. So it happens. But as much as the Oscars still denote some kind of symbolic victory, the important thing is that literally everybody recognizes Toni Collette's performance in this movie to be incredible.

Hadn't seen this before. 30 minutes in. Paused until my anxiety attack settles down.

not being able to do this live is what made seeing this in a packed theater such a memorable experience

that was where my wife peaced out entirely iirc xp

Yea it's why as much as i loved it, a rewatch is not forthcoming

this movie was scary as fuck, and I have seen my fair share of horror flicks

I would rewatch just to try and figure some shit out, plus like Midsomar there are some great shots

creepiest parts:

smiling Peter in the glass reflection
mom banging her head against the attic door
first manifestations of the naked people
*cluck*

the high speed decapitation and headless daughter sitting in car in driveway gave me nausea

every now and again, when half asleep going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, i get an image of the naked guy smiling in the corner and i have to banish it as quickly as possible as a dangerous brain worm

yup that was like Shining bear-suit level creepy

I watched this last night and didn't get much from it. I dampened my feelings about Collette's suffering because it was basically too gruelling (the scene in the bedroom after she's discovered the daughter is precisely the scene that most movies leave out and for good reason - it was too much), which mostly meant I found the histrionics overpowering and they took me out of the film. The thunk as she sawed her own head off made me mutter a 'thank christ for that'.

I enjoyed the pacing of the first half, but the rapid speed of the final third made me think of a whole bunch of post-Conjuring films that mistake elevation for tension and maybe even psychedelia (Mandy absolutely doesn't fit this pattern).

What's stayed with me is the commentary on parenthood (much the same as its twin in gruelling misery, The Babadook) and the terror of failure, of passing one's neuroses and suffering on to your own kids. And reading this thread has definitely made me wish I'd seen it at the theatre. Awesome score, obvs.

You gotta wonder

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClRkIjSvgrx/

hmm. over/under $200?

Under!

https://shop.a24films.com/products/hereditary-gingerbread-house