2 minute read

(Spoilers abound)

Hereditary is one of the most profoundly disturbing movies I have ever watched. I found myself muttering throughout the thing: “Oh dang, “Oh no,” “What the fuck!” I can honestly say I was shocked and terrified like I haven’t been by a horror movie in years. My gut continued to quiver well after the movie ended. The only other movie that came anywhere close was the original Blair Witch Project, which I saw when it first came out and which was unlike any other scary movie I’d ever seen until then.

I don’t think Hereditary changes any paradigms like Blair Witch did, but it’s so well executed, well acted, and, in many ways, thoughtfully restrained.

When it does depict gore, it’s graphic, but it doesn’t rely on gore for its tension. There are only a few shots throughout the entire thing, and they’re used mostly as a kind of punctuation and not a gratuitous showcase element like you’d find in slashers (which I don’t like much). There are few, if any, jump scares. There are no bombastic exorcisms or flashy paranormal sequences. The tension and the terror come almost entirely from feelings of uncertainty and helplessness.

I love supernatural horror movies because of the uncertainty and unease they can evoke in their characters. It forces characters to ask questions in a way they wouldn’t in other kinds of horror - you can see a serial killer with a knife and at that point you don’t really need to ask questions. You just need to run. You can’t see a supernatural element. Does it live in your house or does it follow you? Are you being controlled by it or is it torturing you? Can you even do anything about it? You don’t have to be able to see it for it to hurt you. Does anyone else believe you when you tell them? There’s a cerebral quality to that kind of terror.

Hereditary really leans into the question of what’s actually happening. The Graham family suffers the tragic loss of their youngest child, Charlie, in a car accident in which their eldest child, Peter, was driving. Annie, their mother, has just lost her own mother with whom she had a contentious relationship. The movie switches between points of view: Annie and her helplessness, Peter and his guilt, Steve the partiarch trying to remain level-headed and take care of what needs taking-care-of.

A series of increasingly mysterious events unfolds as the characters deal with grief in different ways. As the movie progresses it constantly forces us to question what’s real vs what’s a product of minds wracked by extreme misfortune. The characters experience their own separate contacts with the supernatural until the end, where there is a possibility (emphasizing all the uncertainty here!) that they coalesce into a single, shared delusion.

After all that, the only thing we seem to know for certain is that there is no recovering from the loss of a child.