For the first hour and 45 minutes of this movie, I planned to start this review by ranting about how Hereditary isn’t a horror film. And for that entire time, it isn’t a horror film. It’s a straight drama without any horror in sight. Then, lo and behold, it rather abruptly turns into a horror film in the last 15 minutes and a pretty good one at that. However, it was just too little too late. If a comedy doesn’t have any jokes in it until the last 15 minutes, I couldn’t recommend it no matter how fucking funny they are. Also, this is Rosemary’s Baby. I don’t mean that it’s inspired by Rosemary’s Baby. I mean that it fucking is Rosemary’s Baby. The twist at the end isn’t exactly the same, but it’s pretty goddamn close to the point where if this had been released as a remake of Rosemary’s Baby, I would consider it to be one of the most clever remakes that I’ve ever seen. Problem is that I don’t like Rosemary’s Baby. I find it to be an excruciatingly boring film while waiting for the end to finally happen and that pretty much sums up how I feel about Hereditary.
I can say very little about the plot without spoilers, so I’ll give only the broadest of strokes. Toni Collette stars as Annie and the film opens just after her reclusive mother died. Following this, Annie and her family must deal with another tragedy in the family and they slowly descend into full-on dysfunction. Supernatural elements are introduced by the end, but I don’t want to give it away. Unless you’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby, in which case you can guess exactly where this is going.
I’ll get through the positives before I rip this movie a new asshole. The performances are excellent, especially Toni Collette. Her performance has garnered a lot of attention and rightfully so. Her emotional pain and descent into full-on bonkers is goddamned awesome and she deserves attention during awards season. The rest of the cast, especially the always-great Gabriel Byrne as her husband, are also all damned good. And the horror, when it finally arrives about 14 hours into the film, is effective. This finale of this movie has some of the creepiest shots that I have seen in a long time and it reminded me of the criminally underrated The Exorcist III.
That being said, this movie is agonizingly, excruciatingly boring. I have never come this close to falling asleep in the theater before. I did everything that I could to stay awake. I counted the people in the audience (28). I counted the number of times the girl next to me hid in a blanket when nothing scary was actually happening (8). I wondered why she had a blanket. I tried playing “Iron Man” by slapping my Milk Duds box against my knee. Fucking anything to keep my brain active during this long, slow slog through family drama. I’ve heard of audience members walking out on this film and I can understand why. For the majority of this film, you might think you wandered into the wrong theater if you thought you bought a ticket for a horror film.
I rarely address critics’ reactions, but the discrepancy between professional film critics and audiences on this film is startling. While critics have been calling this one of the best horror movies ever made, the film has a horrendous D+ audience score. I’m largely siding with the audiences on this one. While I think that it’s unfair that many have commented that this movie doesn’t make any sense (it doesn’t lay things out through exposition, but it leaves enough clues that you can follow it if you pay close attention), this is a prime example of bait-and-switch marketing. And for all the professional critics: Go fuck yourselves. This is not the scariest movie since The Exorcist or The Shining or whatever cliché comparison you want to make. Those may be prime example of slow-burn horror movies, but the horror in those builds gradually and is pervasive throughout the whole film. This movie burns as hot as the fucking arctic for 90% of the run time and then throws gasoline on everything in the last 10 minutes. That’s not a slow build, that’s a lot of boring bullshit. The marketing for this film really did it a disservice in that way. They should have done one of two things with it: 1. Release it as a remake of Rosemary’s Baby or preferably 2. Market it as a straight-up drama without acknowledging the horror at the end. That would have gotten people talking and put asses in the seats.
This just isn’t my kind of horror movie. I like more fun horror films that don’t take themselves so goddamn seriously. I liken a good horror movie to almost a carnival haunted house-like experience; it’s tries to be creepy throughout, but knows that’s it’s ultimately lighthearted and there to provide consistent entertainment (stuff like Halloween, Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.). This is just too goddamn slow for me and the payoff isn’t worth it. If you like Rosemary’s Baby, you will probably like this. If you don’t, wait until it’s available to watch at home and skip to the last 15 minutes. To steal a line from Peter Griffin’s review of Citizen Kane: There, I just saved you two long, boob-less hours.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film)#/media/File:Hereditary.png
