Film Review: Hereditary

Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery

Cert: 15 cert

Director: Ari Aster

Screenwriter: Ari Aster

Starring: Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne, Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Christy Summerhays, Morgan Lund, Mallory Bechtel, Jake Brown, Harrison Nell, BriAnn Rachele, Heidi Méndez, Moises L. Tovar, Jarrod Phillips, Ann Dowd, Brock McKinney.

Running time: 2h 7min

Parents advised reading before viewing the film as some scene may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.

Sex & Nudity:

• Though not played for titillation, there is definitely some skin and dark sexuality in the story's demonic mix.
• The camera gazes closely at one of Annie's dioramas depicting Annie's mother offering an exposed breast for a baby Charlie to suckle.
• The men and women are seen from every graphic angle, including male full frontal.
• Peter and the camera's eye stares at a love interest's jeans-covered backside.
• Full frontal male genital nudity including penis and scrotum. As is normal for Hollywood, topless female partial nudity only, all female genitalia being covered

Violence & Gore:

• A character slams their head onto a table, breaking their nose and bleeding from multiple orifices.
• Lots of blood, gore, and body horror. Severed heads, corpses, and disturbing images are seen on screen, especially during the second half.
• Near the beginning of the film, a bird flies full speed into a school class window, smashing itself against the glass.
• Later, a character grabs a pair of scissors and cuts the dead bird's head off in bloody fashion.
• That decapitation symbolism is repeated several times in the course of the film.
• While hanging her head out of a speeding and swerving car, someone's head is ripped clean off when it hits a phone pole on the side of the road.
• We don't see the impact, but we hear the wet thump and later see the severed head on the roadway, bloody, torn and covered in large ants.
• A desiccated, maggot-covered body is dug up from a grave and used in a satanic ritual after its head is removed.
• We watch a woman gorily saw her own head off with a wire garrote.
• A decapitated head is placed on top of a ritualistic idol.
• A character has a nut allergy. After accidentally eating a piece of cake adorned with chopped nuts, they gasp and writhes in agony as their throat and airways slowly close.
• A man is consumed by roaring flames: The camera later closely examines his smouldering, crisped flesh.
• While possessed, a man repeatedly slams his own face down on his desk, shattering his bloodied nose and splitting his top lip.
• Another possessed person slams her head against a closed door repeatedly, too.
• A character tells vivid stories of people committing suicide and of finding the grisly remains of someone in their car.

Profanity: 

• Some infrequent strong language, including multiple uses of 'fuck', 'shit', 'damn', and their derivatives.
• Some 20 f-words pop up in dialogue and the lyrics of a rap tune.
• There are some 10 misuses of God's and Jesus' name

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking:

• A teenage character smokes pot recreationally. Underage drinking and teen partying are seen.
• A large group of high school kids drink beer and booze at a party, and Peter offers weed to a few of his friends there.
• Annie and Steven both pop prescription pills when the going gets rough.
• We see Steven throw back a glass of Scotch at work.
• Charlie makes small toys-mirroring her mother's miniatures. She uses empty prescription bottles as part of her source materials.

Frightening/Intense Scenes: 

• The film is loaded with supernatural terror and suspense, tons of disturbing images, graphic violence (see above). The film contains scenes of demonic worship, cult practices, and fiery seances. Violence against children.
• Confirmed MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence, disturbing bloody images and behaviour, language, drug use and nudity
• The movie has been considered 'the scariest movie ever made' by critics.

Story: When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter's family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.

Likes: I'l give this film its due it does border along the spectrum of emotions as you go through a range from shocking creepy moments to complete hopelessness and sorrow. The movie picks at the human psyche in all the right ways as it's both hard to watch and impossible to look away.

The acting in this film is brilliant in giving the audience believable moments, as you think the main character is going insane yet by the end you actually realise what is actually going on, which goes get a little borderline psychologically creepy and mess up.

The film has been crown one of the scariest horrors around, yet I would sadly have to disagree with that, yes there are moments that are extremely creepy, where this film get very dark in nature the atmosphere of the film sells this perfect, but there is one major issue with this film which destroys the momentum of the film, where you kind of finding yourself being bored.

This is why I feel personal this film should have been a little shorter as 2 hours and 7 mins was a bit too long for this film, it, not a film I would personally watch again, but it may appeal to some horror fans, as it does toward the end pick up and gets really messed up. So I would say this film is a love or hate type of film, to be honest, really gonna depend on your taste.

Dislikes: The biggest problem with this film is it slowing pacing, nothing is happening until the third act, by the time things start happening, the film is over. The pace seriously does kill the film, it a shame because the creepy moments, the unhinging dark psychological feel of the film is great, but it just drowns out by its own pacing which is way off you find yourself getting bored watching this film.

It just not engaging enough in the first and second act, this is the films biggest problem, though the best parts of the film we're the supernatural side of the film.

Overall: Dark, atmospheric, slow pacing make it boring, good unhinging and creepy moments.

Rating: 3.4 out of 5 for Entertainment / 6.1 out of 10 for Horror