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HEREDITARY (Aster, 2018)
You don’t get films like Hereditary very often. Is it scary? Of course it is. But being scary isn’t as idiosyncratic as you’d like to think. To really pass the threshold, a film must really challenge you. Fortunately for us, Ari Aster’s marvelous debut succeeds above and beyond. What could have been just a simple haunting story, instead becomes a thrilling inquiry of family dynamics and fate. Like my Community College understanding of Freud tells me: aren’t we all just products of our parents? Can we really fight it?
Displaying this turmoil is Toni Collette’s Annie. When her once-estranged mother dies, the family copes with their inner demons. The chemistry between Collette and relative newcomers Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro rivals that of a real family. We watch them mope, we watch them argue and we see them try to hold everything together in the face of their fates.
Capitalizing on this raw talent, Aster plays with our notions of what we think will happen. With the help of cinematographer Pawl Pogorzelski, Hereditary succeeds in creating a dire atmosphere rivaling The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby oozing the confidence of any veteran crew.
While the film does lose a bit of its confidence towards the finale in an effort to make sure you “get it”. The groundwork is all spelled out, having a character speak in voiceover summing it up makes it lose a bit of its’ shine. It’s still so well done on a technical basis that it could have come straight out of a textbook from any lover of the craft.
If we aren’t talking about this towards the end of the year, it better have been a damn good year.
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HEREDITARY (Aster, 2018)
You don’t get films like Hereditary very often. Is it scary? Of course it is. But being scary isn’t as idiosyncratic as you’d like to think. To really pass the threshold, a film must really challenge you. Fortunately for us, Ari Aster’s marvelous debut succeeds above and beyond. What could have been just a simple haunting story, instead becomes a thrilling inquiry of family dynamics and fate. Like my Community College understanding of Freud tells me: aren’t we all just products of our parents? Can we really fight it?
Displaying this turmoil is Toni Collette’s Annie. When her once-estranged mother dies, the family copes with their inner demons. The chemistry between Collette and relative newcomers Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro rivals that of a real family. We watch them mope, we watch them argue and we see them try to hold everything together in the face of their fates.
Capitalizing on this raw talent, Aster plays with our notions of what we think will happen. With the help of cinematographer Pawl Pogorzelski, Hereditary succeeds in creating a dire atmosphere rivaling The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby oozing the confidence of any veteran crew.
While the film does lose a bit of its confidence towards the finale in an effort to make sure you “get it”. The groundwork is all spelled out, having a character speak in voiceover summing it up makes it lose a bit of its’ shine. It’s still so well done on a technical basis that it could have come straight out of a textbook from any lover of the craft.
If we aren’t talking about this towards the end of the year, it better have been a damn good year.
+