Topic Sprockets / Hereditary

By Ian Brockway

From the striking filmmaker Ari Aster, who directed the short film “The Strange Thing About the Johnsons,” known for its cringe-worthy study of a surburban family, comes “ Hereditary,” his first feature. This is a film surely to generate polarizing views. Critics have raved, while audiences have been non-plussed, calling it slow and not a typical horror film.

No matter what side you happen to be on, it is undeniable that Ari Aster has a gift for rhythm, movement and perspective. Narratively, we have a family under a terrific burden on the level of a Lars von Trier psychodrama and then some.

Sweet grandma has passed away, but her daughter Annie (Toni Collette) doesn’t feel as sad as she should. The burden of gloom falls on the other daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) who sketches eerie faces in her notebook. Peter (Alex Wolff) is a dazed teen who mostly smokes pot, while the dreary dad Steve (Gabriel Byrne) just wants to get through the day.

Annie feels guilty about her mom, her death and the fact that Charlie was her favorite. Annie is a mixed media artist and obsesses about her constructions: mysterious and macabre re-creations from her traumatic life. One day she sees her mother smiling at her from out of the darkness. It is quite scary.

Feeling constricted and restless, Annie decides to join a support group while Charlie does sinister things with scissors after a bird hits a school window. Suffice to say, what follows is a gory version of Edward Gorey and nothing good is afoot.

The main compelling aspect of the film is the idea that this morose family is in the process of becoming tiny miniatures themselves. In almost every scene, spaces, buildings and objects appear either over-large or extra small. Parents and kids fidget in their chairs, while a forbidding treehouse seems made of gingerbread. The idea that the family members are only pawns in some cosmic game is arresting and most frightful.

The film is also helped by some scarily placed mouth sounds and a choatic score, pointing to darkness and manipulation.

While some moments feel placed for shock, (parents on the ceiling, burning or headless bodies), “Hereditary” works best for the first hour when one does not have all of the answers. All of the fright one needs is in the faces: Annie’s frustration, her scowl of contempt, Charlie’s baleful expression or the unexpected visit from a saturnine spirit without fanfare or clamor.

The most terrifying thing in the film is in its design and its setpeices. When Ari Aster succeeds he delivers. All of the fright necessary is contained in what we think we might see. A look, a prop or the sight of a dollhouse completely illuminated as if blazing with sinful fire.

Though “Hereditary” needs more humor and a little less sense of “The Omen,” its visual style is first rate and it contains some real shock, especially in the first half. Sometimes all that is necessary for a jump scare is a framed picture of grandma and an unexpected sound produced from the roof of the mouth.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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