2018
Directed by Ari Aster
Yay! An actual horror film to have on the blog in October. I knew nobody was buying it when I tried to sell The Lady Vanishes as a horror flick last week. This is actually an entry from the latest edition. I am afraid that I have grave tidings to share about this edition: it contains The Greatest Showman. That's right; Zac Efron has finally danced his way onto the List. A moment of silence, please.
This is a hard film to summarize, especially when you strive for a spoiler free existence. Toni Collette is a miniaturist who recently lost her mother, whom she had a complicated relationship with. She has a supportive husband in Gabriel Byrne, and tries to help her children, or at least, her daughter, navigate the grief. But it's a horror movie and there's a dollhouse, so you know shit is going to get serious.
When people say a film is a "slow burn," that is usually code for "nothing interesting happens for the first half of this movie." But Hereditary is a slow burn in the best sense of the phrase; I've rarely seen dread built so effectively. Toni Collette is now going to be a permanent fixture in my nightmares.
Some of the images in this movie will stay with me forever, so I wouldn't exactly recommend this, but anybody who loves horror should love this movie.
RATING: ****-
Interesting Facts:
Ari Aster's feature film debut.
Ari Aster requested that Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro go out to dinner to try to make their relationship as brother and sister seem more organic. Apparently they sat in silence for three hours as Alex tried to get Milly to speak. That sounds about right.
I was a bit confused by this movie. The horror here is from the traumas the family experience, especially after the daughter dies and the alienation within the family caused by it. It is almost as if the supernatural element is tagged on and misplaced. For this to be true horror it is unnecessary. Insanity is horrible enough. For this reason it works best three quarters in and then goes strange.
ReplyDeleteTo me there are two thematic plots and they are in the way of each other.
I understand why that would bother you, but as a personal preference I like horror movies that can let you forget their genre for minutes at a time. Because life is pretty horrible even without dollhouses. But I can understand why that might come across as clunky.
DeleteToo Scary sounding for me!!!!
ReplyDeleteI think I liked this one, but not fully sure I understood it..
ReplyDeleteBut mostly, my kind of horror... Lots of atmosphere rather than blood & gore..
Sorry, off Topic for Heredity... But a quick thank you to Amanda who somehow managed to tip me off that 'Crazy Rich Asians' and 'Sorry To Bother you' were going to be on the new update.. so I got to see them
ReplyDelete('Sorry to...' is weird but I enjoyed it, 'Crazy Rich..' is awful, even more than the mamma Mia movies as a celebration of excess consumption and obscene wealth)
So as a result, that when iCM updated the 1001 MYMSBYD list last night, I'm still running a 100% completion of the brand new up-to-date list..