Hereditary (2018) - The most intense film I've ever watched

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We cannot choose from which family we were born. There are a number of things that we inevitably have to accept. Can't protest, because it's already derived. That is what the Graham family experienced. This family is always condemned with misfortune in the form of mental illness. Hereditary brought the term "inheritance" to the most extreme side, and for that, Ari Aster presented it through a very intense approach. Perhaps one of the most intense films I've ever watched. But the question of the "hidden" claim, wait a minute.

Spooky is relative. For me who is a boarding house child, the thing that is scattered remains the old date. Okefine, crunchy. Continue.

Calling it plek as a horror film might make some casual viewers disappointed. Horror indeed, even at one point into the supernatural realm, but not horror that focuses on mere ghosts or sadists. Indeed there are scenes of sightings and things that move on their own as well as bloodied parts, but not paranormal activities that make us afraid. Instead, he uses supernatural elements to explore emotional tragedies. We are horrified by what might happen to them or what they might do.

This success makes us sit uncomfortable for most of the duration thanks to the shrewdness of the maker in building the atmosphere. We can immediately realize that we are in the hands of a great director, despite the fact that this is the first long film. The horror comes from the most essential source of terror, the reality of the human soul itself. But this also makes it a complicated film. He tried so close to the real world that the printouts that I usually ignored in a traditional horror film poked my logic many times, which honestly disrupted watching pleasure.

What will happen to the Graham family, please find yourself. But I can tell what they just experienced. The film opens with a funeral. Grandma just died. Despite grieving, Annie (Toni Collette) said that she had never been so close to her mother. The mother, he said, is a closed person who only wants to hang out with his exclusive friends.

The problem is not just the grandmother. Annie's eldest son, Peter (Alex Wolff) is an awkward teenager who likes to stare and smokes marijuana. While his youngest child, Charlie (Milly Shapiro) ... is very strange. Really weird. He likes to make a "clam" sound with his mouth, diligently makes scary pictures in a notebook, and that's why a piece of head from a bird carcass is bagged. Only the father (Gabriel Byrne) who looks rather normal.

What about Annie? He himself was not even sure of his mental health. He used to do something during sleepwalking which almost endangered the lives of his two children. On a normal day, Annie is a miniature artist who has a commercial project, but instead makes a miniature of her own house, including a re-creation of some of the tragedies that befell her family. Is this a manifestation of his desire to control the fate of the family that he cannot control? Or ... or ...

What is clear, the grandmother's death triggered unexpected successive misfortunes for them, which I should not reveal. The film even dared to take a very surprising narrative choice in the first half of the film, I didn't believe what I just saw. Every new tragedy occurs, the family is getting destroyed and its members are getting away. Then enter Joan (Ann Dowd), sympathetic mothers who have just lost their children, which then shows Annie how to communicate with dead people.

There is a kind of sense of confusion that feels present, but this seems intentional because Aster puts us directly in the middle of the Graham family. At least until the climax moment, we don't know whether what we saw really happened or not. What guides us is the strong appearance of the players, especially Collette. Annie Graham is a complex character, and Collette successfully brought it. He is able to move emotions in the extreme in a short time, even in one scene. This is special acting, not just in the context of horror. His appearance was heartbreaking. Wolff gave a very odd acting, unlike acting that we usually see. But it worked and was very intense.

Not only the affairs of the actor, Aster also commanded the full film technically. Audio-visual, this film is perfect. The grim cinematography of Pawel Pogorzleski, the stifling scoring of Colin Stetson, and the mastery of space and space by Aster create a pleasant sensation of horror where we always anticipate something bad will happen. We are conditioned to be "almost" all the time; tense but stop just before the climax. So on, over and over. From the start, Aster has planted some foreshadowing and instructions to help us digest plot details while playing expectations. And when that happens, it is not presented through jumpscares but shock-making imagery that is likely to be fixed long in our minds.

Even so, I don't like this film as much as I expected. The film keeps its tension almost an hour more, but then jumps off the track in the final half. My suspension of disbelief meter is almost over the maximum limit when a movie several times simplifies logic for the convenience of the plot, and finally breaks also in the climax. I can't speak in detail because this requires me to reveal spoilers. But clearly, this reminds me of The Witch. But The Witch has the advantage of being narrow in scale; he was successful thanks to his settings in the past and in a very limited scope. Hereditary does not have this advantage and it is definitely difficult for Aster to make an astonishing situation be convincing.

Now, I'm confused. I am amazed by the skill of the maker. I mean, the atmosphere really makes me shudder. I was also very late with the Graham family dynamics. But the basic logic flaws and tone jumps at the end leave a sour taste after watching. Maybe if you watch it again you will prefer it.