the familial trauma chiller HEREDITARY

Really liked a lot of this. As a sleepwalker I've not seen a more trueful portrayal of the confusion involved.

Your mom worshiped the devil and possessed you too??

>It reminded me a bit of the (awesome) Korean horror flick The Wailing in its almost comical level of intensity and willingness to play with expectations.

Oh man, I *loved* The Wailing. There were a couple of scenes late on which stayed with me a for a long time - the night time conversation with The Mysterious Woman and her promise, and the bit where the priest goes into the cave. I'll never look at a Minolta High-Matic the same way.

Did Joan put something in Annie's tea when she first went to visit her?

I think that's meant to be unclear.

I finally got to see this movie

From Charlie's death to the final sequence, every scene was a disappointment

So much hand-holding through easy-to-grasp myth-building

No way to trace the logic behind Annie's breakdown-- why did she decide to burn the book? no reason

Music ruled tho, I loved the placid approach to the final scene

The Charlie seance was one of the worst-acted/written/directed scene I've ever seen and reminded me why I typically avoid films starring Gabriel Byrne

lmao, I liked Byrne's cluelessness/inability to engage with the situation, like he couldn't access the movie he was in (purposely, I think)

That is Gabriel Byrne in every movie he's cast in

It's a mystery to me how that man gets any work

Ha, I think he's pretty frequently fine (particularly in In Treatment and Miller's Crossing) but I completely get just having a mental block to enjoying some actors. (for me this is Juliette Lewis)

Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't work out what Byrne's job/employment actually was in this film.

she decided to burn the book because it was full of creepy pictures of her son being killed?

There was just a vast gulf between "clearly very obvious plot elements being overexplained" and "subtle things being not explained at all (writing on the wall, significance of the model homes)", that certain moments where Annie was begging for people to believe that She Alone Knew What Would Fix Things-- let's have a seance! let's burn this book and I'll die and all will be well-- and Annie's insistence upon those acts being accomplished-- "I alone can fix this!"-- made zero sense to me.

I think for the most part the weird gaps, indulgences, and leaps you're mentioning were experienced by most people (at least itt) as features and not bugs. (See also the leisurely-turned-hectic pacing). Without another feature to contrast it with it's tough to know how deliberate the cumulative effect of these choices were, but it seems to have struck a nerve. (Though clearly not with everyone! See also the CinemaScore.)

The near-constant use of crane shots was nice

xp i have the same vibe, in that i really enjoyed this but could also totally see why others would hate it for many of the same reasons

Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't work out what Byrne's job/employment actually was in this film.

Office Man

i got the impression he was a professor or academic of some kind but now i can't remember why

was that gabriel byrne naked in the doorway at the end?

no, it was the creepy dude who was smiling at charlie during grandma's funeral at the beginning of the movie

Ah dude looked a lot like him at that point. Would of made for a disappointing plot twist

Would have*

there's a really good blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail in the scene where Peter has his freak-out/possession in the class. just after the camera pans out to show all of his classmates reeling in shock, one of them at the edge of the frame is shown standing nonchalantly filming the whole thing on his phone.

This was wonderfully entertaining, funny, rewarding

Yeah I thought it was great in a Witch plus Rosemary’s Baby plus Ordinary People. Really affecting score too and amazing sound design. I do agree with one review I read that they kind of waste Colette in the ending but she’s so good throughout seems a minor complaint.

She is always making these faces, and being filmed from these angles, that recall Shelly Duvall in The Shining

i got the impression he was a professor or academic of some kind but now i can't remember why

He was a psychologist, which you can see from his email address. I took it he was just unwilling to refer his wife for help without showing his colleagues the breakdown of his marriage. him looking at a distance, I thought was his understanding but total lack of perspective.

Another resonance when Charlie says that grandma wished she would have been a boy, because imagine the disappointment when you know your favorite grandchild is basically useless WRT being the host of Pazuzu Paiman.

the breastfeeding diorama, I have no answer for....

i feel mixed on this one. I think I need to watch it again as there is a lot being communicated throughout that builds towards the conclusion that might have gone over my head.

Fantastic tension - I was genuinely gripped, peeking through my fingers, hugging my hoodie in anticipation, but there was very little release and most moments of pay-off felt over the top to the point of being unintentionally risible. We'd be holding our breaths one minute, then bursting out laughing the next. The last 20 minutes was like they were trying to crowbar-in as many scary special fx as possible.
Great acting from Collette and Millly Shapiro, but Peter, the teenage son really took me out of it. He looked way too old for a start and I just couldn't deal with his acting.
I wasn't sure how much stuff was properly related to the Paimon plot and how much was just 'scary bollocks' thrown in to creep you out.
Was Annie in on the whole thing from the start? Why did she know to keep Peter away from her mother/try to cause a miscarriage?
What WERE the words on the wall?
I didn't like the explanatory voiceover at the end. I feel like they could have given just a smidge more airtime to the Paimon cult throughout the film rather than just explain it to me in stupid person language at the end. Felt very 'Donnie Darko Director's Cut'.
Maybe this will work better on second viewing - I was more concerned about being made to jump (which I'm glad it didn't) to properly analyse the whole thing.

fwiw the person I saw it with liked it more after a second viewing

i feel like i've seen Shapiro in something else recently but Wiki says it's her film debut... not sure where I got that from.

you got it from wiki iirc

hail paimon, folks

fuck i loved this

last 15 mins were a trip

Just saw this, and kinda glad I watched it at home during the day tbh! Intensely unsettling. I should have paid more attention, because I missed a few cues such as the relevance of Annie's ramble at the group therapy, and the mother's funeral (the cult people were apparently all the attendees she "didnt recognise")

Am left with a few questions: did Annie know all along what her mother was? The attic boxes scene indicates not, but then again she fought against her mother re Peter (trying to abort him when pregnant, keeping him from her mother etc). I think I need to watch it again!

she didn't know for sure - she just had a tortured relationship with her mother, as did her brother who committed suicide as a teen who was clearly the first attempt at a vessel. the whole movie builds to this conception that yes, mom IS really evil

I cant decide wether the ending is awesome, or a little too obvious, but I like that one could read it either way (ie the ending could still be metaphorical/hallucinatory). It also touches on all that satanic panic stuff of the 80s.

kinda interesting to watch a movie build and build for 90 minutes then spend the last 30 not sticking the landing at all. operative word there is “kinda”

i *wish* the last 15 minutes were a trip, it all felt so restricted and inevitable and linear

it is weird to feel bored when a main character is sawing their own head off that’s for sure

The near-constant use of crane shots was nice

― nevertheless, he stopped (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, June 26, 2018 9:12 AM (six months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm though

brad did you watch this at home? I think the theater experience was p key for me on this one, esp w/r/t Stetson's score

crane shots were u&k in drawing subtle links between annie’s POV of her dioramas and paimon’s POV of the family, a line which is blurred in the very first shot of the movie

between this movie and Mandy, the combination of horror + score did have some sort of banner year in 2018
virtually everything else sucked, but we had this!

v otm, two of my favourites of this year for sure

hereditary >>>>>> mandy though

what a terrible opinion

anyway yes the score was v good, and i did watch this at home

i really hated mandy, the score was cool though

that's cool it's not for everyone flops

yeah i don’t think you all are bad for liking it or anything; i latch onto characters and dialogue and plot, and it had essentially none of them. also saw it the week after a breakup which prob coloured the xp, whereas i saw hereditary whilst falling in love

that was where my wife peaced out entirely iirc xp

Yea it's why as much as i loved it, a rewatch is not forthcoming

this movie was scary as fuck, and I have seen my fair share of horror flicks

I would rewatch just to try and figure some shit out, plus like Midsomar there are some great shots

creepiest parts:

smiling Peter in the glass reflection
mom banging her head against the attic door
first manifestations of the naked people
*cluck*

the high speed decapitation and headless daughter sitting in car in driveway gave me nausea

every now and again, when half asleep going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, i get an image of the naked guy smiling in the corner and i have to banish it as quickly as possible as a dangerous brain worm

yup that was like Shining bear-suit level creepy

I watched this last night and didn't get much from it. I dampened my feelings about Collette's suffering because it was basically too gruelling (the scene in the bedroom after she's discovered the daughter is precisely the scene that most movies leave out and for good reason - it was too much), which mostly meant I found the histrionics overpowering and they took me out of the film. The thunk as she sawed her own head off made me mutter a 'thank christ for that'.

I enjoyed the pacing of the first half, but the rapid speed of the final third made me think of a whole bunch of post-Conjuring films that mistake elevation for tension and maybe even psychedelia (Mandy absolutely doesn't fit this pattern).

What's stayed with me is the commentary on parenthood (much the same as its twin in gruelling misery, The Babadook) and the terror of failure, of passing one's neuroses and suffering on to your own kids. And reading this thread has definitely made me wish I'd seen it at the theatre. Awesome score, obvs.

You gotta wonder

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClRkIjSvgrx/

hmm. over/under $200?

Under!

https://shop.a24films.com/products/hereditary-gingerbread-house