the familial trauma chiller HEREDITARY

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

as someone who liked both movies v much I think hereditary >> mandy is a defensible opinion

more than anything though I cannot recall a first feature in recent memory from a total unknown that made this much of an impact and I'm v curious to see what he does next

Maybe dont watch his vimeo short as it is even more disturbing than hereditary

Toni collette deserves an oscar nomination btw

She'll get one, I think.

peter's crying in this movie is kind of amazing, I didn't think there was a way to cry in a movie that I haven't heard before and that I would find startling and upsetting, the way it is when you actually encounter a person crying in real life

Alex Wolff's performance/screen presence was so unusual that I was surprised to discover he has a ton of credits already

btw Aster's followup is out in August so we can expect a trailer soon

another vote for hereditary >>>>>> mandy

I thought Mandy had some cheap nudge nudge wink wink elements, but hereditary was unique and inspired.

i would like to clarify that i didn't hate this, it just didn't go far enough for me. i wish it felt open-ended but it feels extremely closed off. this is a fine and ok thing for a movie to be but it frustrated the hell out of me. i will also say that endings adversely affect the way i think of the rest of a film. also in my initial post i did not clarify that i think the first 90 minutes of this are p terrific

hmm. over/under $200?

Under!

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