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.
