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Hereditary
The 2018 thriller Hereditary does provide sporadic "boos" along the way but the story takes way too long to come together, trying this reviewer's patience.
The film opens with the death of an elderly woman and as we see her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette) delivering her eulogy, we realize this woman had more than her share of secrets. It's not long before the death of Annie's mother sends her family on a terrifying spiral, leading to some frightening reveals regarding Annie's ancestry.
This thriller reminded me of a 2016 thriller called Hush because, like that film, director and screenwriter Ari Aster seems to be more adept at providing the temporary "boo" than he does at providing a well-rounded story. There were way too many unanswered questions in Hush that led to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Here, most of the questions get answered but it takes way too much time and the viewer has lost interest way before intended.
A little more attention to technical aspects of the story also hurt the proceedings. There's a car accident where Annie's daughter is decapitated and the way the impact is filmed was completely incorrect and made it a little hard to accept anything else that went on in the story. The story initially appears to suggest that the elderly woman wanted her family to join her in death, but it was so much more than that, but Ari Aster's pacing of the story is just too deliberate to sustain interest and about 2/3 of the way through the film, I found myself checking my watch.
The one thing the film does have going for it is an absolutely superb performance by Toni Collette that effortlessly anchors the proceedings. This is no surprise since Collette is incapable of giving a bad performance, it's just too bad that she didn't have a vehicle more worthy of her talent here. Alex Wolff also scores as her son, Peter and there are some startling visual effects, but Aster's lackluster direction and swiss cheese screenplay just weigh the whole thing down.
The 2018 thriller Hereditary does provide sporadic "boos" along the way but the story takes way too long to come together, trying this reviewer's patience.
The film opens with the death of an elderly woman and as we see her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette) delivering her eulogy, we realize this woman had more than her share of secrets. It's not long before the death of Annie's mother sends her family on a terrifying spiral, leading to some frightening reveals regarding Annie's ancestry.
This thriller reminded me of a 2016 thriller called Hush because, like that film, director and screenwriter Ari Aster seems to be more adept at providing the temporary "boo" than he does at providing a well-rounded story. There were way too many unanswered questions in Hush that led to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Here, most of the questions get answered but it takes way too much time and the viewer has lost interest way before intended.
A little more attention to technical aspects of the story also hurt the proceedings. There's a car accident where Annie's daughter is decapitated and the way the impact is filmed was completely incorrect and made it a little hard to accept anything else that went on in the story. The story initially appears to suggest that the elderly woman wanted her family to join her in death, but it was so much more than that, but Ari Aster's pacing of the story is just too deliberate to sustain interest and about 2/3 of the way through the film, I found myself checking my watch.
The one thing the film does have going for it is an absolutely superb performance by Toni Collette that effortlessly anchors the proceedings. This is no surprise since Collette is incapable of giving a bad performance, it's just too bad that she didn't have a vehicle more worthy of her talent here. Alex Wolff also scores as her son, Peter and there are some startling visual effects, but Aster's lackluster direction and swiss cheese screenplay just weigh the whole thing down.