Sunday, June 17, 2018

'Hereditary' A Review

Hereditary is a supernatural horror movie about a family dismantled by the death of an estranged grandmother. The film opens on the funeral of Ellen the mother of Annie(Toni Collette) and a bizarre, cryptic, somewhat negative eulogy. Odd things start happening to Annie's kids Charlie(Milly Shapiro) and Peter(Alex Wolff). Disturbing, abusive back story is revealed about Ellen and her relationship with Annie and her grandkids. In her grief Annie is approached by Joan(Ann Dowd) who forcibly manipulates her into performing a seance and an already bad situation gets worse.

Although stacked with incredible talent the cast od hamstrung by the innate emotional irrationality of the script. Even before the supernatural elements of the film ramp up the characters behavior strains credulity. Collette's Annie acts like a petulant teenager, crippled by co-dependence and mental illness to the point that its unbelievable she could even function. Shapiro and Wolff are a bit more well rounded but one of the major situations the plot hinges on features the two of them in a preposterous series of events. So much so it deflates the narrative momentum as its attempting to ramp up. The lines Dowd is forced to speak are so over-the-top her scenes are out of a different movie. Gabriel Byrne is the only character that resembles normalcy but because he doesn't react to any of the insane behavior going on around him his character also comes across as virtually non-human.

Visually the film has style, that it's one major achievement, Annie is a miniatures artist and this motif is used repeatedly to good effect. Virtually every other aspect of the film is a failure. The script and corresponding performances are the most glaring but the pacing is plodding to the point of drudgery. By the time things start to happen and we discover what is really going on the discoveries are irrelevant because the incomprehensible characters haven't garnered any interest. Even if there are magic and ghosts people still need to act like people.

Baffling behavior and a languishing plot make this one of the most frustrating and disappointing films of the year.

Don't See It.

1 comment:

  1. Hereditary: Tolstoy wrote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In this film each member of the Graham family is unhappy in their own way. Annie (Toni Collette), the mother, grieves for her own recently deceased mother. But she was estranged from that difficult, domineering woman for years only reconciling towards the end.> Reviews Hereditary
    Her father starved himself to death, her brother committed committed suicide. All of that trauma seems to have driven Annie over the edge.
    Charlie (Milly Shapiro), the daughter, is unhappy in herself, gorges on chocolate, sketches continuously, cuts the heads off dead birds, sleeps in a treehouse. Peter (Alex Wolff), the son, is a pothead, he feels unloved by his mother, as the film unfolds he develops a crippling guilt over an accident he feels responsible for. Steve (Gabriel Byrne), the paterfamilias, has a countenance as dour and world weary as we’ve come to expect from Stephen Rea. He carries out the mundane tasks of cooking and trying to keep the family together.

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