Hereditary Review/List 10 horror(ish) movies about grief.
4,0
Ari Aster
Cast: Milly Shapiro, Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Gabriel Byrne, Ann Down
Length: 127 min
Country: USA
Country: USA
Ari Aster’s ambitious debut is probably one of the most unnerving cinematic experiences in recent memory. Carried throughout by a sensational performance by Tony Colette, Pawel Pogorzelski’s unsettling cinematography and an eerie, crippling score by Colin Stetson, Hereditary has all the ingredients for a nightmarish screening.
It opens with a shot of a miniature house. The camera moves inside the house, where the Graham family live. Just this sequence sets a voyeuristic tone to the film, almost as if the characters’ lives were artificial, their destinies set in stone, chosen and controlled by something bigger and more powerful than them.
Annie (Toni Colette) is an artist who builds miniature architectural dioramas, who is dealing with the recent death of her mother, Ellen, a secretive old woman whose relationship with her daughter has always been problematic. Annie is also married to Steve Graham (Gabriel Byrne), and mother of Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro) a highly disturbed 13-year-old girl who was the only one close to her grandmother.
We soon find out that Annie’s family has a history of mental illness. Her dad starved himself to death, her brother killed himself and her mother suffered from dementia towards the end of her life. An inherited darkness haunts this family generation after generation.
It opens with a shot of a miniature house. The camera moves inside the house, where the Graham family live. Just this sequence sets a voyeuristic tone to the film, almost as if the characters’ lives were artificial, their destinies set in stone, chosen and controlled by something bigger and more powerful than them.
Annie (Toni Colette) is an artist who builds miniature architectural dioramas, who is dealing with the recent death of her mother, Ellen, a secretive old woman whose relationship with her daughter has always been problematic. Annie is also married to Steve Graham (Gabriel Byrne), and mother of Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro) a highly disturbed 13-year-old girl who was the only one close to her grandmother.
We soon find out that Annie’s family has a history of mental illness. Her dad starved himself to death, her brother killed himself and her mother suffered from dementia towards the end of her life. An inherited darkness haunts this family generation after generation.
Charlie seems to be the embodiment of that darkness. A really peculiar child, with a frightening look and an unsettling verbal tic. She spends most of her time drawing worrying doodles and making bizarre dolls with unmatched heads.
In a very brief scene, Peter is in school not paying much attention to the lesson. The teacher is talking about the Greek myth of Iphigenia (recently turned and twisted into Yorgos Lanthimos’ unnerving masterwork The Killing of the Sacred Deer) where Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter to the gods so that his ships can sail to Troy. The teacher asks the class which is more tragic, if the characters were responsible for their own dreadful fate, or if the characters had no control over their destinies and their lives were doomed by bigger forces from the start.
Annie starts secretly attending a support group for people who have lost their loved ones, where she meets Joan, played by Ann Down (The Handmaid’s Tale), a character that echoes Ruth Gordon’s character in Polanskis Rosemary’s Baby.
Following their grandmother’s death, The Graham family is at the centre of a series of upsetting events which is better not to dig too much into. All you need to know is that “Hereditary” is a movie which plays with the viewers expectation. Maybe more shocking than scary, it is a film that is over saturated with a sense of dread and hopelessness. It is a film about trauma. About how we transfer said traumas onto our children, like a disease. Annie had a terrible relationship with her mother, a feud made of silence. She has a difficult relationship with her son Peter, especially after she did something unforgivable to him while she was sleepwalking.
In horrors, we always come across characters who are dealing with loss. Death is always at the centre of any horror movie, but it seems only recently that the horror genre is exploring grief as more than a mere plot device, digging in the dark places of the human soul. Hereditary shares a lot of themes with Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014) which was another brilliant horror movie about trauma, motherhood and grief. Whereas in The Babadook Essie Davis’s character seems to learn how to live with her "demons", Hereditary has a more nihilistic and destructive climax where darkness reigns and there is no escape from the looming dread.
Every character seems to process death in completely different ways. Steve seems to be always contained, pragmatic and rational; Peter is in a permanent state of shock, whereas Annie is an uncontrollable flow of raw emotions which Toni Collette delivers on screen with a bone-chilling intensity.
In a very brief scene, Peter is in school not paying much attention to the lesson. The teacher is talking about the Greek myth of Iphigenia (recently turned and twisted into Yorgos Lanthimos’ unnerving masterwork The Killing of the Sacred Deer) where Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter to the gods so that his ships can sail to Troy. The teacher asks the class which is more tragic, if the characters were responsible for their own dreadful fate, or if the characters had no control over their destinies and their lives were doomed by bigger forces from the start.
Annie starts secretly attending a support group for people who have lost their loved ones, where she meets Joan, played by Ann Down (The Handmaid’s Tale), a character that echoes Ruth Gordon’s character in Polanskis Rosemary’s Baby.
Following their grandmother’s death, The Graham family is at the centre of a series of upsetting events which is better not to dig too much into. All you need to know is that “Hereditary” is a movie which plays with the viewers expectation. Maybe more shocking than scary, it is a film that is over saturated with a sense of dread and hopelessness. It is a film about trauma. About how we transfer said traumas onto our children, like a disease. Annie had a terrible relationship with her mother, a feud made of silence. She has a difficult relationship with her son Peter, especially after she did something unforgivable to him while she was sleepwalking.
In horrors, we always come across characters who are dealing with loss. Death is always at the centre of any horror movie, but it seems only recently that the horror genre is exploring grief as more than a mere plot device, digging in the dark places of the human soul. Hereditary shares a lot of themes with Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014) which was another brilliant horror movie about trauma, motherhood and grief. Whereas in The Babadook Essie Davis’s character seems to learn how to live with her "demons", Hereditary has a more nihilistic and destructive climax where darkness reigns and there is no escape from the looming dread.
Every character seems to process death in completely different ways. Steve seems to be always contained, pragmatic and rational; Peter is in a permanent state of shock, whereas Annie is an uncontrollable flow of raw emotions which Toni Collette delivers on screen with a bone-chilling intensity.
Toni Collette, almost 20 years after the Sixth Sense, is one of those incredibly versatile actresses that seems never to get the recognition they deserved. After last year, when Get Out was surprisingly acclaimed at the Oscar (an award that always seems to have been unfair towards horror movies), there is hope that things are changing. It would be great to see her nominated, maybe paired with Emily Blunt in her almost wordless performance in A Quiet Place. Whether is the film is going to be recognised or not, it is important to specify that it is not a crowd pleaser.
In the same way that, last year Darren Aronofsky’s hellish fever dream of biblical proportion Mother! had such a divisive response. Hereditary will follow the same destiny. Triggered also by the hype around this movie and the comparison with films of the calibre of The Shining and The Exorcist, the vast majority of the audience will come out of the theatre bewildered, confused and annoyed. Most people will find this film pretentious and unnecessary gory, by few others it will be revered as a harrowing instant cult as Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby. On one thing, everyone in the audience will agree: Hereditary is not a pleasant view.
In the same way that, last year Darren Aronofsky’s hellish fever dream of biblical proportion Mother! had such a divisive response. Hereditary will follow the same destiny. Triggered also by the hype around this movie and the comparison with films of the calibre of The Shining and The Exorcist, the vast majority of the audience will come out of the theatre bewildered, confused and annoyed. Most people will find this film pretentious and unnecessary gory, by few others it will be revered as a harrowing instant cult as Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby. On one thing, everyone in the audience will agree: Hereditary is not a pleasant view.
Movies you might like if you like Hereditary:
Rosemary's Baby (1968) by Roman Polanski
Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg
The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick
The Babadook (2014) by Jennifer Kent
Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg
The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick
The Babadook (2014) by Jennifer Kent
Niche List of the week
10 Unconventional horror(ish) movies about grief
Some critics have coined the "post horror" genre, where cheap jumps scare are replaced with existential dread. As it happened with Hereditary, who was marketed as a mainstream horror, It Comes at Night and The Witch were heavily criticised online by disappointed members of the audience. The majority of the films in this list would usually not be considered horrors in the most traditional sense. However, they all have elements that seem fitting more with the horror genre than with a family drama; The depiction of disturbing violence, gore, surreal and supernatural elements or just simply an eerie and unsettling atmosphere. Using Venice's canals as the backdrop in Don't Look Now, or Paris's streets in Personal Shopper, these directors found original ways to convey the horror of grief on screen. From a children book to an anonymous text message, from a white sheet to a red coat, or even a talking putrefied fox. Here the list:
(Ordered by year)
(Ordered by year)
- Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg, wanted to make a movie where "grief into the sole thrust of the film". "Grief can separate people ... Even the closest, healthiest relationship can come undone through grief". Gorgeous directing and cinematography, Don't Look Now is a slow-burning masterpiece which combines elements of Gothic horror with the real-life horror of losing a child. Starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as John a Laura, a devastated married couple whom daughter drowned in a terrible accident. They travel to Venice, where John has accepted to restore an old church. It is there that Laura will meet a woman who claims to be a clairvoyant who informs them that their daughter is trying to communicate and warn them of danger.
- Alice Sweet Alice (1976) by Alfred Sole
Alice Sweet Alice (As well know as "Communion" and "Holy Terror") is a crazy slasher movie which was considered as the closest American movie to the Italian Giallo movement. Alice and Karen are two young sisters. Karen is brutally murdered in church by a masked individual, during her first communion, leaving the family in shock. Alice seems to be the first suspect. Violent and over the top, Alice Sweet Alice unfolds as a typical murder movie, but the film also explores the family's self-destruction caused by grief.
- Haunting of Julia (1978) by Richard Loncraine
The film opens with a powerful and devastating scene. Julia, played by a Mia Farrow tries to save her daughter, from suffocating while eating her breakfast in vain. Following the death of her daughter she leaves her husbands, moves to a big house in London and she is haunted by the sadness of losing her own child and the ghosts of other children. Similar in the themes of Don't Look Now, The Haunting of Julia is not perfect, but benefits from some creepy moments and a beautiful synth soundtrack composed by Colin Towns.
- The Sixth Sense (1999) by M. Night Shyamalan
A classic from the 90's. Nominated to 6 Academy Awards, loved by both the audience and the critics, The Sixth Sense is a well-balanced triumph. It's genially eerie in parts, with an extreme
attention to detail and a great performance from an extremely young and promising Haley Joel Osment and again a phenomenal Toni Colette. What made this film such a success was not only the surprise twist but its sensitivity on the themes of fear of death, family ties and grief.
- Lake Mungo (2008) by Joel Anderson
- Antichrist (2009) Lars von Trier
The first chapter of Von Trier's "Depression Trilogy" (followed by Melancholia, 2011 and Nymphomaniac Vol 1 and 2, 2013), Antichrist is probably the most horrific and impenetrable of his work. A nightmarish experimental psychological horror filled with an unparalleled sense of dread and hopelessness.
Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a married couple whom toddler died in an accident, whereas they were having passionate sex. Devastated by guilt, what follows is increasingly more and more violent, sadomasochistic and disturbing. Not for the faint of heart and mind.
Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a married couple whom toddler died in an accident, whereas they were having passionate sex. Devastated by guilt, what follows is increasingly more and more violent, sadomasochistic and disturbing. Not for the faint of heart and mind.
- The Babadook (2014) by Jennifer Kent
Essie Davis is extraordinary as a grieving single mother dealing with the loss of her husband and struggling with her extremely difficult child. Grief takes a unique shape in Jennifer Kent's debut The Babadook. Grief is in the pages of an eerie black and white pop up book. "You start to change when I get in/The Babadook growing under your skin…” reads Amelia to her son as a bedtime story. Kent is exploring new territories in scary movies by overlapping real-life struggles with the supernatural.
- Personal Shopper (2016) by Olivier Assayas
Eclectic and versatile French director Olivier Assayas collaborates a second time with a surprisingly good Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)), in an unusual ghost story set in Paris. More character study than a horror film, Personal Shopper is a movie about people trying to move forward from grief. Stewart plays Maureen, a young personal shopper whom brother died recently. She is also a medium. She will start receiving anonymous text messages which she thinks they might be from her dead brother.
- It comes at Night (2017) by Trey Edward Shults
It comes at Night is more a meditation on family, loss and paranoia, than a more traditional post-apocalyptic horror. Director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha 2014), drawing parallels with Romero's classic The Night of the Living Dead (1968), creates a slow-paced, atmospheric movie set in a desolate house in the woods where a small group is taking shelter from an outside threat.
- A Ghost Story (2017) by David Lowery
Lowery's A Ghost Story is not a scary horror movie, but it is more engrossing and haunting than most ghost stories. It's a film that explores grief, love, death, the passing of time and the futility of existence in a singular and contemplative way which echoes the work of Terrence Malick. Shot in 4:3, the camera follows a ghost under a white sheet (Casey Affleck) who returns to his bereft wife (Rooney Mara).
These lists are open to recommendations. If you have a film in mind that should be on the list please leave a comment and tell us what you think.
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