Written and directed by Ari Aster

Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne

With all those glowing reviews pouring in, and some good word of mouth, it would be easy for me to join and call Hereditary as one of the great horror films. But I can’t. I wanted to love it, but didn’t. For all its pyrotechnics, the film drags, and moves too slow for its own good, and ends up finally as some kind of beautiful boredom.

What’s interesting here is that Hereditary pays HEAVY homage to The Shining, and to The Witch, which also lived in Kubrick’s world. The difference here is that The Witch is one of the best movies I have ever seen. I left the theater with my heart exploding out of my chest, and choking on screams I couldn’t echo in its final minutes. Elated I was, to have seen the best film of 2016 so early on in the year. I walked out of Hereditary with just a shrug. Meh.

So why do I still think about The Witch? Why does my mind so often wander to its imagery, and implications, and ending ? Why am I so unenthused by Hereditary? I’ll tell you why.

There is another horror movie that Hereditary takes its pages from, almost sinfully. The film’s conclusion mimics this classic exactly, and any horror fan will walk out with disappointed familiarity. I can’t say the name of this film because it would spoil the whole. But that’s the point, we have seen this movie done in better ways, by better films.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if the ending of Hereditary was more properly built to. The elements necessary for an exciting reveal are only exposed to us minutes before it happens, so it doesn’t pack the punch it wants. People will talk about how the symbols and writing on the walls (literally) were present all the while, but that’s bullshit. You will be bored.

I don’t fault anyone for this result. This is Ari Aster (the writer/director) in his debut, and what a great looking and sounding movie it is. The lighting is exceptional for a horror movie, and Aster knows how to heighten and silence the sound when he needs to. Hereditary is an extremely quiet movie, which is wonderful at times and completely mindnumbing at others. He does this neat thing where he’ll play with the directions of the sounds in the frame. You may hear things on opposite sides of where you’ll see them. And some of the dialogue is mixed to combine and echo and a muffle. It’s extremely cool.

The major issue is the script. It calls for a long and slow and painful burn. And it throws elements at us way too late in the game to care as much as we should. It is trying way too hard to disturb and scare us rather than disturb and scare us. All the best in the genre are effortless, and even the really good ones do their best to hide the efforts. Hereditary is just too open in view with its filmmaking. Its technical expertise are far too good for its story and script, you’ll be distracted.

Just like when I saw The Witch, I also walked into Hereditary without having seen a single trailer or promotion other than the film’s poster. I saw a creepy looking little girl and that was it. I give the movie a lot of credit that it’s really a story about a dysfunctional family rooted in mental illness, and stars a grown mother on the edge of her sanity.

Toni Collette plays the mom, and it’s one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. She sells this shit like no one else can. Not for one single second did I not believe her as Annie, a woman stricken with all the mental illnesses in the world, trying to control her life after the passing of her hateful mother. She was there, a real person with schizophrenia, anxiety, paranoia, and harrowing depression. It is almost too real, I think, because of what the implications of the movie’s message might be.

But the rest of the family. I wondered desperately what Gabriel Byrne was doing in this picture, cast as the dad Steve. But by the end I realized his passive, near lackluster acting was the right counter to Annie’s manic explosiveness. Alex Wolff plays their son Peter. You will hate this fucking kid. Milly Shapiro is the creepy little girl on the poster. I won’t say anything more.

Aster has a lot of long takes in this movie. He loves letting scenes just play out from a single unbroken shot, and often he moves the camera in and out and around the room during them. I dug the camera in this movie. It works best for Toni’s insane existence onscreen. If you have, or have ever known someone, with a mental illness (I think that makes everyone) you’ll recognize how amazing she is in this.

But Aster also lets the camera linger, and drag, and bore us to near impossibility for a movie made so well. Hereditary, keep in mind a HORROR film, runs over 2 hours, and my god does it feel so much longer. It takes decades, centuries, eons for this movie to get where it’s going. It’s just shooting itself in the foot, running out of gas for a drive it thinks we want a ride in.

And for what? A ripped off ending we have seen in a much better movie long ago? And what exactly is the message here? That mental illness is pure evil? What does that say with those afflicted? Are they evil as well? Are they doomed to only ruin the lives of those around them? What is this movie trying to say? The ending is just too bizarre and a weak carbon copy of something far better.

Hereditary is a great effort, with a okay result. I am not bored easily, and I love strange and bizarre movies done right. This one  just didn’t do it for me. Is Hereditary one of the best horror films in recent years? Absolutely fucking not. It will not rank in the company of The Witch, and The Shining, and that other movie whose name I can’t mention. But oh how it tries.