Sundance Review: HEREDITARY is a Bone-Chilling Horror Thriller in the Vein of ROSEMARY'S BABY
I didn't see a lot of horror movies at Sundance this year. Usually, there are a few horror films that I see, but this year there was only one true horror movie that I saw... Hereditary. It was the last movie that I saw at the festival and holy shit! It was so good and the perfect film to end the festival on.
I'm a big fan of the horror genre and usually, there's always one great horror film to come out of Sundance and Hereditary was that film. It's more of a psychological horror thriller that messes with your head and it goes into some creepy-ass bone-chilling territory.
There's not a lot of in-your-face horror thrills in this movie. This is a slow burn horror movie where the suspense just builds and builds until it explodes at the end. A lot of the scary aspects of the film lurks in the shadows and through the sounds. There are also some incredibly frightening visuals and brutal themes that will make audiences gasp and ginge at.
I would liken the film to the classic horror thriller Rosemary's Baby. It has the same kind of vine and tone, only this one goes a little further and a lot darker. Here's some food for thought, imagine if the baby born at the end of Rosemary's Baby wasn't the right vessel for the devil. Hereditary kind of images what might happen if that was the case.
The story follows the Graham family whose lives start to fall apart after their reclusive grandmother dies. There is a lot of mystery behind their grandma's life and her presence casts a dark shadow over the family after she dies. I don't want to get into too many details because I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just tell you as much as the official synopsis for the film reveals.
The presence of their grandmother looms over her loner teenage granddaughter, Charlie, "whom she always had an unusual fascination with. As an overwhelming terror takes over their household, their peaceful existence is ripped apart, forcing their mother to explore a darker realm in order to escape the unfortunate fate they've inherited."
As the story unfolds, all kinds of nightmarish things begin to unfold and the mysteries surrounding the grandmother and what she was a part of begin to reveal themselves. Trust me... the story of this movie doesn't go in the direction you think it will go.
The movie was helmed by first time writer and director Ari Aster and I love the delirious dreadfulness that the movie offers. If you're a fan of horror films, you're definitly going to want to watch this one.
The movie also has a great cast that includes Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and actress Milly Shapiro, a young Broadway actress who gives a haunting performance.
