Hereditary

17 Replies

Science tells us we should bring our dates to a scary movie because science is a cold, hard bitch and wants a second date at any cost. Basically, physiologically, our bodies respond to emotion via flushed skin, a pounding heart, increased blood pressure, dilated pupils. But our dumb, primitive minds can’t distinguish between a pounding heart due to a jump scare, and a pounding heart due to an impending, welcome kiss. So if your girl has a strong emotional response to the movie, it’s a confusable arousal where the next day she might be interpreting it as the first signs of love, and not the anxious dread that it really was. It’s a trick. A trick to scoring a second date on false premises. Thanks, science!

We were celebrating our anniversary, nothing marquee, but far enough along in the shuffle of life that Sean doesn’t need any tricks. I’m a sure thing. But Hereditary is the movie that has been looming in our lives for 11 months now. It played for a single night at SXSW last year, and despite my complete and unabashed love of Toni Collette, we skipped it. You already know I’m a chicken, and in my defense, we’d already seen A Quiet Place on opening night, and I was still recovering.

Anyway, I didn’t think I could outrun this movie forever, and I sort of didn’t want to. I MV5BMWVlNThkNTctMDU3My00Nzc5LThlZjItMzJmOGFjYTc3MWExXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjQ4ODE4MzQ@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1498,1000_AL_mean, it IS Toni Collette, and I’d heard good things from all of you. But every time the remote hovered over its selection, we’d managed to find a reason not to. This time, however, I was in my cups, and all loved up, and full of cheese, and I said yes.

Hereditary is not one of those horror movies that is content with merely scaring you. It lulls you with its family drama, pulls you in with its unanswerables. And then it turns on you. Sure, it uses some classic horror stuff to scare the bejesus out of you. I mean, when did we agree as a culture that the backwards crab walk was just not okay? One day it’s an exercise in elementary gym, and the next thing you know, you’re chilled to the bone when anybody does it in a dark, dank basement. But it’s legit. Director Ari Aster drills you and drills you, and you know something’s coming, in fact you’re practically asking for it because the dread is unbearable. So the minute someone slams their own face into a wall, it’s nearly a relief.

But I think the real scary thing about Hereditary is what it says about the family. Normally we think of family as our shield and our safety – and our homes as a cocoon that will protect us. No longer. Aster has the nerve to paint this family as self-menacing. Even a mother’s love is suspect. And that’s a sensation that will stick with you long after the credits roll.

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17 thoughts on “Hereditary”

  11. selizabryangmailcom

    Yeah, this was a total surprise, how creepy/eerie slow-tension building it was. It’s the weirdness of the tense atmosphere that gets you–even more than the obvious scares at the end. And Toni Collette….amazing, as usual.

    Liked by 1 person

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  12. joanne m. austin

    There’s an aspect of this movie that drives me nuts, if you catch my drift, from my own personal experience. I will say no more. But otherwise it was awesome (even if I was squirming in the last half hour more because I wanted things to wrap up).

    This line you wrote, BTW, is epic: “This time, however, I was in my cups, and all loved up, and full of cheese, and I said yes.”

    Liked by 1 person

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