‘Hereditary’ Shakes the Foundation of the Horror Genre

The film is an apt alibi of our political climate.

A still from Hereditary. 

The Quint

Hereditary is a horror film, but it refuses to plant horror in the jump scares that we have become so accustomed to. The terror here is born in the most sacred institution of our civilisation: the family. As the title winks at you, a growing sense of unease builds up to hint at how the very family that’s supposed to nurture and protect will ultimately be the cause of our doom.

Can we really escape our fate?

Writer-director Ari Aster introduces us to his domain of disquiet with a shot that takes us into a studio of diorama artiste Annie Graham (Toni Collette). The camera then tricks us into the intimacy of a diorama model which turns into a room with living, breathing creatures. This is just the beginning of space within spaces, a pattern that disorients, and destructs comfort.

An off-screen death informs us that the Graham family is grappling with a loss. Annie has just lost her mother Ellen, who according to her was a very private person with private rituals. The mother-daughter relationship like a Bergmanesque nightmare wasn’t a smooth one, and from the very start, we start wondering whether Ellen is somewhat responsible for Annie’s shifty conduct.

Toni Collette gives one of this year’s most sustainable performances in Hereditary. 

Like her mother, Annie is not in sync with her kids. Her son, Peter (Alex Wolff) likes weed and girls, but her daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is deeply withdrawn and has weird hobbies. Despite her mother’s presence, Charlie who had a close bond with her grandma now wonders who will take care of her.

Canonical horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Now hover as influences, but the film builds frights with convinced gravity, refusing to allow shock clichés of popcorn horror. The scares begin with a trump card, a scene so visceral in impact it shakes the entire foundation of the horror genre. And there’s no looking back.

Milly Shapiro in a still from Hereditary. 

Aided by Pawel Pogorzelski’s camera, Aster takes the portrait of an ideal American family, and breaks it down bit by bit, with every muffled scream. The film lays its design slowly, and the narrative pattern uses the curiosity of a puzzle. The devil here truly lies in the details, and ample scenes fill them up with elements that don’t jump at you, but stay in the background for you to spot, and recoil. This exercise of foreboding, it keeps you guessing, it keeps you fascinated, until the last piece falls in place to solve the riddle. Then you are a little underwhelmed, for the sum of all fears don’t pay off as anticipated. Casting Ann Dowd in a role that you most suspect also serves as a spoiler before the big reveal. The stranger than fiction becomes the most familiar of them all, and all metaphors then turn into a collage of exposition.

As most entries in the current horror renaissance display, genuine horror lies in performances of emotional rigour, and Hereditary understands it very well.

Collette playing Annie gives one of this year’s most sustainable performances, a volatile portrait of grief, first a reluctant mourner for her mother, then descending down the rabbit hole for her child.

A still from Hereditary. 

The way her nerves give in, her words of desperation shifts you to the edge of anxiety as you panic for her disintegration. Annie’s husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) thinks she is going crazy in anguish, but we know the terrible answer. If we are alarmed for Annie, Wolff breaks our hearts, as his eyes show alienation and suppressed agony with near-honesty.

Aster is well versed in the genre he is debuting in, and he debriefs it by telling us individual freedom will not be any good. All his characters unwisely believe that they can sail through this horror, but none realise the nature of their life, like puppets in a miniature show, controlled by a bigger force resembling Annie’s dioramas. It’s an apt alibi of our political climate: the ghastly horror of our lack of self-determination.

(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder).