I’m really not sure what to write here. Hereditary is a horror movie of unique caliber. It is an unflinching deep dive into mental illness, grief, toxic dysfunctionality, and with each passing minute it gets closer and closer to the limit and then kicks down the safety barrier and cannonballs right over the limit into the abyss of madness.
While you won’t find any jump scares or CGI monsters, Hereditary is a downright terrifying movie so much so that I’m not even going to say anything about the plot because I do believe that the less you know going into this movie the better your experience will be. This is the type of movie that gleefully leads you in one direction and then happily yanks you in a completely different darker direction. I would say that this is beautifully masterful if watching this movie didn’t fill me with the most horrid dread.
I was thinking back to whenever I was 8 years old and watched Phantasm 2 for the first time. Granted, I know that movie isn’t that great, but to 8 year old me, it was the most terrifying thing in existence and I remember being so scared that night after the movie was over that I couldn’t even walk down the hallway to the restroom without someone going with me. That terror I felt at 8 years old is with me once again thanks to Hereditary. This isn’t the kind of movie that you watch once and forget about oh, this is the type of movie that burrows into your subconscious and makes you think about it no matter how much you don’t want to.
The ending gets a little ridiculous with the exposition explaining everything that you just witnessed almost like the ending to an episode of Scooby-Doo, but this movie is amazing. This is horror at its most primal and I enjoyed the experience of being disturbed to my very core.
Jason Gaston 