On the strength of your collective recommendation I went to see
Hereditary in a cinema last week, and jesus, I really wish I hadn't, because now I can't stop thinking about it. People of a nervous disposition should be warned that this might well be the most unfrightening horror movie ever made. God knows I am easily scared, especially at the movies, but
Hereditary frightened me about as much as
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace while amusing me a million times less.
Damn, it was dull, very dull indeed, so dull that its dullness is very hard to put into words, but certainly as dull as a very, very, very, very dull thing. If you removed all the clumsy plagiarisms, sorry, all the "tropes“ "quoted“ from much better films (most blatantly from
Synecdoche, New York, from
The Shining, and from the great Garth's aforementioned
Darkplace), then about twelve minutes of exposed celluloid would remain, none of it watchable without regret.
What's undeniable is that
Hereditary is full of unfathomably weird mysteries, starting with the casting. How did Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne, a strikingly pasty-faced couple, manage to produce a Pakistani son who still goes to high school despite being at least 28? ("Greetings, fellow teenagers!“) Why does this hulking elderly youth agree to take his pudgy wheyfaced sociopathic chocaholic kid sister to a high-school senior party where drugs, booze and his hot classroom crush await him? For no discernible reason, except that the script requires him to be driving that car and his sister to be in it. Also because his mother orders him to take the brat along, so naturally he offers not the slightest resistance, even though Mom had only recently SPOILER ALERT tried to set fire to him while he lay in bed.
Why does no member of this ridiculous family ever notice that Salvador Dali has planted a giant hut-on-stilts very prominently in their back garden, despite the fact that its window regularly lights up a demonic red? Presumably because if any of them were to notice this invasive shed prematurely it would "spoil“ the unspeakably schlocky ending, which provides not the first laugh of the evening but certainly the hollowest.
Toni Collette (chewing the furniture) and Gabriel Byrne (a solid oak sideboard) were also Executive Producers of this masterwork, which raises worrying questions about the state of their careers, to say nothing of their sanity. What persuaded these previously-respected actors to sink their money and reputations in such a turkey? It cannot have been the script, which is as full of holes as a Menger sponge. Perhaps they wagered, correctly, that the critics would be dependably awed by the budget. Either that, or else they were being blackmailed.
The film was directed, allegedly, but this too is hard to believe.
Toni Collette in
Hemorrhoidy
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC