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Hereditary - how scary is it? (spoilers)


Isis

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11 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I LOVE all those old Hammer films, but they're not really 'scary' in the same sense that say, The Exorcist was scary, or Ring was scary, or even in a different way, Halloween was, if not 'scary' it was v e r y suspenseful. 

I totally agree! The Devil Rides Out is a personal fave of mine. But it’s not really very SCARY. Same with this. I think it had a fantastic first act and moments of excellence and terror and great acting but I didn’t find the conclusion all that scary as my hearty laughter reaction would indicate. 

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3 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

PLEASE GUYS!!! 

I can’t be the only one with this reaction...

when the movie ended I might have accidentally terrified or greatly amused the other cinema goers because I full o went “HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA WHAT THE FUCK” 

honestly the ending made it lose its steam for me - i enjoyed it I think!!! But it felt VERY reminiscent of all those old hammer horror/universal movies from a few decades ago that were obsessed with the occur and evil witches. Felt kinda cartoon.

im a bit surprised someone upthread said this film worked more than The VVitch for them. I thought the VVitch was excellent - I thought this was good too! I think? I’m a bit confused by my reaction tbh lol and I’m hoping I’m not the only one that had it 

I DID think the use of the tongue click to evoke horror was very effective though 

That was me. It pretty much comes down to the fact that The Witch bored me tbh. I thought the pacing was almost glacial during the second act. I am absolutely fine with a good slow burn but with that one i really struggled. Never felt like that with Hereditary. Even though the latter clocks in over 34 minutes longer. 

There’s also Toni Collette’s performance in Hereditary, which was amazing. Nobody quite stood out like that in The Witch, imo. Everyone was fine, but nothing remarkable. 

Another thing that I found annoying in The Witch was the dialogue. I could barely understand much of the father character’s lines. Seeing it in the theater probably hurt it there. Subtitles certainly would have helped. 

Last but not least I just didn’t find The Witch very scary/disturbing, whatever you want to use for an effective horror movie. It was fairly atmospheric in the beginning, I’ll give it that, but thinking back nothing really stood out as unforgettable. None of the scenes took me aback. Whereas Hereditary definitely gave me the chills a couple times (Charlie’s death and the shot of her head, possessed Annie hovering in the corner of Peter’s room, the naked cult members waiting in the attic, etc). Black Phillip didn’t work particularly well for me either. I even remember kind of chuckling at him at one point, which I doubt was the desired effect. I didn’t hate the ending of The Witch, but I’d say it fell it a little flat for me. Certainly didn’t feel like some huge payoff after such a slow buildup. The ending of Hereditary worked better for me, if nothing else the visuals were more effective.  The Paimon effigy with Charlie’s head was pretty fucked up, and I love Ann Dowd as an actress so maybe I’m biased but the exposition dump with her didn’t bother me. 

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I dunno - maybe I’m just being a snob. I thought The VVitch was a genuinely masterful folklore film - one I desperately wanted AND needed. Excellent metaphor for religious paranoia and isolation & genuinely creepy well made folklore film. I LOVE folklore - am a HUUUUGE fan of it & would consider doing a phd in something related - that’s how much I love it. 

Hereditary, to me, is just another decent supernatural flick. 

The first act was brilliant and you’re right it had some horrifying images and moments that were flashes of excellence but the ending was kind of naff to me. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I watch it again - which I definitely will.  

It was a very well made spooky haunted house type film. There’s lots of them. The VVitch was a brilliant portrayal of a dark folk tale that had excellent themes of paranoia, extremist religion, patriarchal values etc. It had SO MUCH to it - so much to say - so much to comment on. AND it was well made. Hereditary was well made and it said...what...evil cults are spooky??? I mean...I guess lol. 

Maybe I expected too much - I watched mother! last night which was filled with metaphors. I should enjoy Hereditary on a shallow level for what it is. It does some things VERY effectively.

basically I TOTALLY agree with Mark Kermode’s take on it. Like COMPLETELY agree - will link that now 

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I loved the pacing of The VVitch - it so effectively captured folktales and how they reflect the desires and fears and anxieties of the villages/communities/families that share them. The whole film felt part of something bigger - either a huge metaphor or a hallucinogenic fever dream brought on my decaying crops or the representations of an isolated, evangelical and repressed family ruled by a strict patriarch which makes them vulnerable and weak to outside forces.

i guess I just found the whole evil cult possession thing in hereditary more shallow and kinda silly. A bit naff. But I really did enjoy watching it in the cinema even though I found the ending kind of hilarious in a totally warped way. Still unsure why I laughed so loudly. 

Maybe it’s unfair to compare the two films really even though they’re both about the breakdown of familial units suspectible to attack from outside forces 

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On 6/19/2018 at 5:13 PM, Jaimstoyevesky said:

These were the most terrifying moments of the film IMO. These and the dawning realization Peter just went to bed leaving Charlie's headless body in the car for his mom to find.

And overall found the film very unsettling. Agree with those saying Toni Collete was excellent. She has one of those faces uniquely well suited for horror, like Shelley Duvall. The musical score also made you feel like you were descending into the schizophrenia that seemed to be afflicting multiple characters. 

That said, felt a lot of the horror was undone with the over the top supernatural ending. I thought it would go the other way and focus on the real instead of the magical. The film is called Hereditary and it's clear the family has a history of extreme mental illness. I could see the trauma of Peter's disastrous mistake causing both him and Annie to become completely unglued. So much could be explained by their mounting hallucinations and nightmares alone. I find familial mental illness and a family's inability to deal with the resentment that builds when the son does something unforgivable way scarier than a Satanic cult and possession by a devil king. To me those kind of horror contrivances let the viewer off the hook. We can ascribe some external malevolent force to all the awfulness occurring instead of the internal demons it established so well.

Which ultimately keeps this film from reaching the level of the Shining, which is a shame, because it felt it was building that way. The first hour or so was really awesome. But like so many horror films, felt it didn't stick the landing. 

 

Yes! Agree with all of this. It had all this promise and then it just ended with... because devil worshippers, so there. 

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I guess I am in the minority, I like my supernatural films to have real supernatural stuff, not mentally ill people who were hallucinating.  "satan" is not my favorite theme, but real ghosts, possession, other dimensions, demons from other dimensions, magic that works.  Sign me up.

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1 hour ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I dunno - maybe I’m just being a snob. I thought The VVitch was a genuinely masterful folklore film - one I desperately wanted AND needed. Excellent metaphor for religious paranoia and isolation & genuinely creepy well made folklore film. I LOVE folklore - am a HUUUUGE fan of it & would consider doing a phd in something related - that’s how much I love it. 

Hereditary, to me, is just another decent supernatural flick. 

The first act was brilliant and you’re right it had some horrifying images and moments that were flashes of excellence but the ending was kind of naff to me. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I watch it again - which I definitely will.  

It was a very well made spooky haunted house type film. There’s lots of them. The VVitch was a brilliant portrayal of a dark folk tale that had excellent themes of paranoia, extremist religion, patriarchal values etc. It had SO MUCH to it - so much to say - so much to comment on. AND it was well made. Hereditary was well made and it said...what...evil cults are spooky??? I mean...I guess lol. 

Maybe I expected too much - I watched mother! last night which was filled with metaphors. I should enjoy Hereditary on a shallow level for what it is. It does some things VERY effectively.

basically I TOTALLY agree with Mark Kermode’s take on it. Like COMPLETELY agree - will link that now 

I think you’re selling Hereditary a little short here. It had themes about passing down mental illness. Chalking it up to just another haunted house movie is way off, imo. 

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6 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I guess I am in the minority, I like my supernatural films to have real supernatural stuff, not mentally ill people who were hallucinating.  "satan" is not my favorite theme, but real ghosts, possession, other dimensions, demons from other dimensions, magic that works.  Sign me up.

I would have been disappointed if there was no supernatural element in this one. 

I seriously LOVED the last 20 minutes. The ending was a little much with the King Paimon speech but I was sort of refreshed that Aster decided to do it. Nowadays movies that make you think at all seem to always be left open to interpretation. I think Aster took a chance by spelling everything out for the audience and it worked for me. I’m not saying I want that all the time but Aster’s decision didn’t take away from the film as a whole IMO. 

I recommend The Wailing to everyone here. It’s a Korean “supernatural thriller”with religious undertones. Some of it still confuses me and I’ve watched many youtube videos about it, but I loved it. 

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3 hours ago, Isis said:

Yes! Agree with all of this. It had all this promise and then it just ended with... because devil worshippers, so there. 

Yeah it did feel like both them and the Devil King's story were tacked on haphazardly at the end. We were thoroughly confused at first. I understand the film was originally 3 hours but was cut back to a more manageable 2. I assume what was cut was more background on the satanic cult and its beliefs.

I think it was going for a Shining type final reveal where she's running through the house and all the ghosts that have always been there are finally visible. But just didn't feel as organic here as it did there IMO. 

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1 hour ago, Jaimstoyevesky said:

Yeah it did feel like both them and the Devil King's story were tacked on haphazardly at the end. We were thoroughly confused at first. I understand the film was originally 3 hours but was cut back to a more manageable 2. I assume what was cut was more background on the satanic cult and its beliefs.

In an interview Ari Aster talks about the original and how they had to cut that hour(30 scenes): “...so there was about an hour more of material that was not horror, that was just about the family going through what they’re going through, and not communicating, and not doing what they need to do to come together.”

So it sounds like a lot of brooding and miserable family time after Charlie was killed. He says later that he prefers the trimmed down version which kinda surprised me. I’m also glad since 127 minutes is more than enough. Full interview here: 

http://collider.com/hereditary-interview-ari-aster/

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5 hours ago, Nictarion said:

I think you’re selling Hereditary a little short here. It had themes about passing down mental illness. Chalking it up to just another haunted house movie is way off, imo. 

Maybe I am - I mean I really DID like it a lot - was immersed in the cinema and think it had excellent acting. It was made WELL and had a couple moments that TRULY shocked me. It was high caliber and maybe I’m being unfair to it to expect something groundbreaking every time I watch a new movie - it’s enough that it’s good. 

5 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Here’s a counter from a really great movie reviewer who loved it. 

 

I’ll watch that in a bit but like I said...I DID enjoy the whole thing. I even really enjoyed watching the ending even though I found it unintentionally pretty funny. 

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6 hours ago, Jaimstoyevesky said:

Yeah it did feel like both them and the Devil King's story were tacked on haphazardly at the end. We were thoroughly confused at first. I understand the film was originally 3 hours but was cut back to a more manageable 2. I assume what was cut was more background on the satanic cult and its beliefs.

I think it was going for a Shining type final reveal where she's running through the house and all the ghosts that have always been there are finally visible. But just didn't feel as organic here as it did there IMO. 

 

I guess we were meant to think that she was hiding from the truth, or in denial about it. Like, why were there so many strangers at her mother's funeral?

When we discussed it afterwards I was like: 'how did Annie NOT know about the satanist cult stuff? She literally picked up a book from her mother's stuff about spiritualism and flicked through it, looking at stuff about... um, POSESSION, and shit. Then she just recites this incantation (sounded like Greek) and she is still not thinking...hmmm, COULD BE SOMETHING ODD GOING ON HERE?'

Like I don't get why she goes along with it? Does she know? Consciously? Subconsciously? Is she already 'possessed'? Like, when she starts going on about burning the book (notebook with Charlie's drawings) I was thinking, she sounds so out of control and iilogical (hysterical), no sane person should be going along with any of her plans. But I suppose she is just hiding things ?from herself ?from her family. Again, funny, because she said her mother was secretive.

But, yes, I just really wish they had done something more subtle with the ending.

 

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I’ve been thinking about this - I feel like the film would have been WAY more effective if all the weird possession stuff was genuine grief and stress and peter had a psychotic break or something. If he had found his grandmothers old occult books and gotten obsessed with it himself to justify what he did. It would have made it way more tragic and sad if the parents are trying to deal with this in the aftermath of losing their kid instead of Annie instantly thinking she’s a medium and then all the bonkers stuff just coming out of nowhere 

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2 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I’ve been thinking about this - I feel like the film would have been WAY more effective if all the weird possession stuff was genuine grief and stress and peter had a psychotic break or something. If he had found his grandmothers old occult books and gotten obsessed with it himself to justify what he did. It would have made it way more tragic and sad if the parents are trying to deal with this in the aftermath of losing their kid instead of Annie instantly thinking she’s a medium and then all the bonkers stuff just coming out of nowhere 

If it was just a psychotic break with anyone I would’ve been pretty disappointed. She was a grieving, stressed out mother who just had a crazy spiritual experience with the seance. She was already on the edge and cult lady Joan gave her a push. Aster explains that the cult was like the puppet masters the whole time making Annie to do all this stuff too, and basically Annie took the bait. Some could chalk that up to lazy writing but whatever. I’ve always preferred having supernatural elements over not in most cases anyways... especially in a movie that is built up as an actual horror movie.

I noticed in the scene when Joan is telling Annie about the seance outside the store that every time Annie started to lose interest Joan would grab her arms and focus her to look at Joan. Such a manipulative and desperate move. It reminded me of a parent trying to get a little kid to pay attention. Great acting by both there.

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6 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

If it was just a psychotic break with anyone I would’ve been pretty disappointed. She was a grieving, stressed out mother who just had a crazy spiritual experience with the seance. She was already on the edge and cult lady Joan gave her a push. Aster explains that the cult was like the puppet masters the whole time making Annie to do all this stuff too, and basically Annie took the bait. Some could chalk that up to lazy writing but whatever. I’ve always preferred having supernatural elements over not in most cases anyways... especially in a movie that is built up as an actual horror movie.

I noticed in the scene when Joan is telling Annie about the seance outside the store that every time Annie started to lose interest Joan would grab her arms and focus her to look at Joan. Such a manipulative and desperate move. It reminded me of a parent trying to get a little kid to pay attention. Great acting by both there.

I agree, it's not a horror movie if it doesn't have any real supernatural stuff, then it's a psychological drama, LOL, which is fine, but a different genre.  I like the idea of the interplay between a person's psyche and how trauma can make them more vulnerable to actual supernatural stuff.  

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What would you call Babadook then, if not horror? 

I just can’t shake off the feeling that was all just a bit NAFF at the end. I’m reading all these reviews like “best film in years! Bone chillingly scary! A must see!” And I usually don’t complain about movies all that much, I’m easily pleased and I did enjoy this film?? I just feel like I watched a totally different film to everyone else lol. These remarks and reviews just don’t really ring true to me at all - but I guess art and entertainment is all subjective! 

I mean I understand the medium stuff gets to grieving people and that made sense but I would have personally felt more disturbed if these awful things had happened for nothing because of a precarious psyche instead of...grandma was a crazy witch and here’s all her naked friends but it was an interesting aesthetic at the end I guess - bowed bodies, two headless, candles, the awful statue thing and the crown. I just...didn’t really feel much from it except to burst out laughing. Strange. 

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