Hereditary Review - Spooky Enough?

Hereditary is a supernatural horror drama film with Ari Aster as its director. It was released in 2018 and has a screen time of 2 hrs 7 mins.

Hereditary follows the story of the Graham Family consisting of Annie Graham, her husband and two of her children. It tells the story of the ominous events that take place after the death of Annie’s mother. Annie receives her mother’s belongings which help provide clues as to what is going on with her family. This ultimately lead her to the true identity of her lineage and the sinister faith she and her children have inherited.

Hereditary, is quiet a long movie with the first half being rather slow paced. The story line and scripting could have been better as the mystery takes very long to fully reveal itself and can be predictable. The name of the movie gives away a big chunk of the mystery. Noting much about the events taking place with the family are shown to be connected to inheritance for a large part of the movie. This takes away that ‘aahaa!’ moment from the viewers. It doesn’t have many ‘scary scenes’ and lacks jump scares giving it a greater potential of being scarier than it is.

However, this is made up for in the movie by establishing the perfect aesthetic for the story it is to tell. This is done with the help of haunting sound tracks, filming locations and the overall cinematography. It has a few terrific senes and the protagonist, Annie Graham played by Toni Collette, has shown formidable acting skills. The other cast member have also given great performances.

I would not recommend this movie to someone who is not scared easily as it could get boring. But, if you happen to have some extra time on your hands and want to watch a horror movie, you could definitely give hereditary a shot as it’s one of the better ones out there.

If you haven't seen the trailer for Hereditary, check it out below-

- Siya Tanwar, writer for lucid llama