Damn. Just got back from watching **Hereditary** and I don't think that I've uttered "Holy shiiiiiiiit" under my breath so many times during a single movie. This movie took creepiness to the next level and really delivered as a horror flick with minimal "jump scares". I'd definitely recommend watching this with a nice big audience because it's without a doubt an "experience" you won't forget.

A comedy should be judged by if you laugh. A horror movie should be judged by if it is frightening. If this movie was judged by its ability to put an audience to sleep, it would be great. It's a horror movie, though, so a fail. I'm not saying I saw the end coming, but all the characters acted like they were just serving the plot instead of being actual people. Toni Collette's performance (or was it the script?) was incredibly uneven as she moved from unaffected to completely traumatized...sometimes within the same sequence. I actually liked the final story reveal and it was certainly built throughout. The problem is it took forever to get there and I hated every character so much, I couldn't care less if they lived or died. Garbage that every critic wanted to use "heightened" in a review will be lining up to kiss its ass. Here's the thing...my theater was full and never even a gasp. Did hear one dude snoring, though. See at your own risk.

Snoozefest. mother! 2. The way people were talking about this movie like it was the scariest thing ever in the world is just insane. I was bored for most of it. I'm done with movies that stay on the same slow zoom on a stationary character with increased buzzing and then CUT to silence. It's been done to death. And the scene that is supposedly so traumatizing, that was a great scene, I shouted, it was pretty sweet, but it's not a "things are different now" situation. This falls right in line with other "modern classics" that were hyped beyond for me like It Follows, The Babadook, and the Witch. I don't care for any of those and a lot of people do. But I'm just not seeing it. Same thing with this. I will give props to the trailer though. Great trailer.

Consider my mind blown! Did I understand the movie? Not always. Was I scared by the movie? Not really, though it did get under my skin. Will I remember this film in months to come? Yes, and you can't say that by all the other cookie cutter horror movies out there. Did I like the movie? Yes, quite definitely, not only for the weird ass story, but for the acting, the camera work, and the deliberately slow pace. I understand how this movie has split people down the middle - as I came out of the film, one woman said "well, that was sh**" - and it clearly isn't for everybody, especially those who favour jump scares and gore over something a little (or a lot) more intelligent. This is a film for those who don't want to be patronised, for those who want to debate a film's merits and plotting, and is for those who want their minds to be stretched, rather than pampered to by lazy directors. Recommended.

[8.6/10] I tend to think of the highest and best form of reviewing films as doing some kind of analysis, not just simply letting the reader know whether it’s good or bad. I still think it’s worthwhile to give a rating, and to talk about what worked and what didn’t in a particular movie, but I think the better side of reviewing is talking about what a film means, how its various elements combine to create theme and meaning and emotional investment. I’d rather engage with the ideas, merits, and flaws of a given film on their own terms than just classify each constituent part of it as positive or negative. But there is one undeniably useful aspect of the “consumer reports” side of movie reviewing, and that is to warn you -- *Hereditary* will disturb you. Yes, there are scares, but few more frightening than any other top tier horror film. It’s not so much that the film is scary; more that it is gutting, It fits in the category of films like *Requiem For A Dream*, where you will walk away from the movie suitably impressed by what you’ve just witnessed, but also feel thoroughly awful about it. That’s my only caution and hesitation in recommending it. *Hereditary* features two key performances that are out of this world and eminently award-worthy. It marries text and theme, a supernatural horror story and a harrowing family story, with complete virtuosity. And though it starts a bit slow, once the film kicks into gear, it grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go until the credits roll, if then. But therein lies the problem, because the film doesn't shy away from the abject horror of both the black magic that threatens to doom and damn the family at its center or the all-too-real, omni-destructive impact of mental illness that underpins the metaphor, and it is utterly devastating to watch. The movie works in both modes. If you want to take it literally, the film expertly slow burns its supernatural horror. It parcels out apparitions in the distance, little bits of unease. It graduates to full on otherworldly happenings that unnerve but seem tame enough, with just enough wrong to be disconcerting. And by the end of the film, the revelation of satanic cults and possession and unexplainable happenings builds to a terrible crescendo, where you’re frightened for the characters, freaked out by the creatures lurking at the edge of the frame, and have a pit in your stomach from the havoc wreaked on this family by the dead hand of plots and schemes from long in the past. But that’s also what makes *Hereditary* so harrowing, when you read it, either purely as metaphor or just with a baked in theme, of the struggle to deal with mental illness, passed down from generation to generation, causing, reinforced, and activated by trauma in a dispiriting vicious cycle. As much as the film soars with its black magic elements and voodoo tricks, the most disturbing parts of the movie stem from its center of a family in crisis, [spoiler]over a woman losing her mother and her daughter in quick succession[/spoiler], over a son who fears his mother wants to kill him, over sicknesses of the mind that manifest in brutal and horrifying ways. The impact of those events is driven home by the incredible performances at the heart of the film. Toni Collette gives the performance of a lifetime, communicating Annie’s unfathomable grief, her sheer desperation, and her trauma-fueled discombobulation that leaves her raw, rambling and dangerous. Collette knows when to go big, huge even, but also when to reduce those emotions to the cauldron rumbling beneath, to the not-quite-right moments that can either play as the tentacles of a devil-worshipping cult wrapping around her through or as the throws of schizophrenia rolling in. And Alex Wolff matches her note for note. While Peter, Annie’s son, doesn't undergo the exact same devolution his mother does, *Hereditary* is a movie that finds its strength in reactions. No character delivers more of those reactions, from dead-eyed guilt and shock at [spoiler]his sister’s accidental death[/spoiler], to bare, unmooring pain at his mother’s confessions and recriminations, to his own, separate unraveling transformation under the weight of those original lingering traumas and the new ones unwittingly inflicted anew by his mother in her own state of distress, than Peter does. The results are utterly disquieting. As much as the supernatural is always lurking at the edges of the frame in *Hereditary*, for much of its runtime it’s a fairly straight, if artsy, kitchen sink drama. The twin spectres of loss and schizophrenia loom large in a family that clearly feels alienated from one another. Even before the film pulls the trigger on the straight up mystical happenings that may or may not be taking place, the scenes of Annie [spoiler]grieving her daughter[/spoiler], of Peter and his mother confronting one another over the dinner table, of imagined sleep-walked confessions, are hard to watch in their rawness entirely independently of any ghouls or goblins. That’s heightened by the cinematography of the film, which both adds to the eerie atmosphere it maintains throughout, and highlights the incredible acting taking place. *Hereditary* is superb at keeping certain images at a distance from the viewer, small or blurry in the frame, as though you’re trying to make out some small detail in one of Annie’s diorama. It not only works in terms of horror, evoking the sense of some ghostly presence just beyond reach, but it dovetails with the movie’s mental illness metaphor, creating a visual representation of mental pathology peeking in before it takes over. At the same time, director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski isn’t shy about emphasizing the intimacy of certain moments. There are numerous close-ups of Annie and Peter’s faces, letting the performers subtle reactions and changes in affect communicate the emotional and physical transitions taking place within them. Those transitions are just too much to bear at times. *Hereditary* is a truly haunting film, one whose paranormal and painfully real horrors will stick with you long after the final frame. That is a blessing and a curse -- a testament to the tragic, unrelenting power of the film, but also a heavy weight to saddle the audience with as it leaves the theater. The movie is well-worth your time and attention, but may be more than you can handle in the moment, or shake after it’s finished.