Hereditary

       Hereditary is about a family who is recently going through the grief of their grandmother's recent passing. Annie, the mom, struggles to deal with her death because of some questionable things that happened during her childhood. As the film progresses, Annie starts to learn more about her ancestry and unravels the secrets that her mother, the matriarch of the Graham family, kept hidden for so long.
       It stars Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Alex Wolff, and Gabriel Byrne as a family of four who struggles to keep their family sane because of both inner drama and the aftermath of the grandmother's death.
       Alongside movies like A Quiet Place or Avengers: Infinity War, Hereditary received mammoth amounts of hype before its release. Critics were making comparisons to classic horror movies, one even calling it "this generation's Exorcist." A couple of days before release, A24 made the "Hereditary Heart Rate Challenge" go viral on the internet; a challenge where people tested their heart rates throughout the film to give an idea of where the good scares were and how effective they were. My Facebook wall had ads for this movie all over the place as well. This is a big deal for A24, the company that released this film. Up until now, every single film to be released by A24 has been limited, meaning that their films would only play at a handful of theaters throughout the nation. Hereditary is their first film to have a wide release which probably means that they were predicting a high success since horror movies seem to be the genre of the year. With a mid 90's Rotten Tomatoes score, this movie was set up to succeed, or was it?
      Hype is in no way a bad thing for a movie to have before its released, but in recent years it has shown to have negative consequences. Hype builds up expectations and that can either pay off or disappoint a lot of movie-goers. An example of hype paying off would probably be, in my opinion, the most recent Avengers movie. Everywhere on my social media, people would not stop talking about how amazing the movie was without giving away spoilers. It mostly did well with audiences. However, movies that disappoint are more up to the judge of the moviegoer. It's easy to judge success and pay off by box office numbers and reviews, but because the quality of a movie is subjective it's more difficult to judge disappointment. In short, generating hype as a marketing tool is probably one of the riskiest methods in film advertisement.
       The complexities of hype and its consequences are perfectly showcased with the release of Hereditary. A24's filmography mostly consists of indie films with a couple horror movies in there.  Indie horror films, however, tend to differ from that of regular horror movies like The Conjuring or Insidious, but because Hereditary got a wide release, it shows that A24 is confident that it will resonate and strike fear into all audience members. With Hereditary, I have seen mostly mixed reactions from the general public. The audience score for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes is a 59 percent. How is that possible for a movie where the marketing displays so much confidence? Well, allow me to explain.
       Something that seems to be becoming a more frequent occurrence is misleading trailers and other advertisements. They promise one thing and then offer a completely different thing. Last year, a movie was released in the summer titled Mother!. All the trailers and advertisements marketed the film as a horror/suspense movie. Once audiences were exposed to what the film actually was it quickly became one of the most discussed films of 2017, but not in an entirely good way. The film was basically genreless and advertising it as a suspense thriller was a poor move on the marketing team. Another film that came out last year also suffered from misleading marketing. It Comes At Night was advertised as a heavy paranormal movie, but when audiences weren't given that movie they were disappointed. Hereditary suffers from this same injury. It was advertised as a movie that had enough scares to have your heart racing the entire time hence the "Heart Rate Challenge," but because it approached horror from a different angle, it upset and disappointed a number of moviegoers. I went and saw it with my whole family, but most of them were somewhat disappointed with it. They were expecting a more "mainstream" horror experience akin to The Conjuring and some of that could be blamed on the advertising. Misleading marketing might only be beneficial for garnering good box office numbers, but the public consensus will suffer as a result.
       This is where another problem comes in and this is because it's a horror film. As I stated before, indie horror tends to be different from mainstream horror. Chris Stuckmann, a movie enthusiast on YouTube, stated it perfectly in his review for Hereditary: "This film understands that fear and horror are subjective. It's going to be different for everyone else." What he means by this statement is that not everyone is going to be terrified of this movie. Its flavor of horror is rather different from the mainstream, but it is not to be equated with indie horror either. It's kind of a mix of the two. If you're expecting jump scares, then you're going to be disappointed. If you have an open mind as to what's frightening and scary then you might be pleasantly surprised.
       So why is the public consensus mixed? Are some people more open-minded than others? Are people just not interested in movies that make you think? In short, I think the blame is partially the marketing, but most of it, I think, can be put on the fact that it's mixing of mainstream and indie horrors just fails to chill the spines of every single person that sees the movie. This isn't because the movie is bad. Its because not every single moviegoer has an open mind. Not having an open mind isn't bad either, however, it just means you have a certain taste in films like everyone else.
       I wanted to get all of that out of the way first because I felt it was important to explain. I'm not saying my inferences are entirely factual, but rather, I'm merely explaining the observations I have made over the last year. Whether you agree or not is entirely up to you. Feel free to comment if you have any other thoughts
       Now that I got all of that out of the way I can finally give my opinion on this movie. I, personally, was terrified. In modern social media dialect, one could say that I was "shook." Ari Aster is an amazing director whose passion and craft are violently visible throughout the movie. Toni Collete gives a genuine Oscar-worthy performance alongside Milly Shapiro whose lack of dialogue proves to be no match for her talent. It's a story that keeps getting unraveled as the movie progresses and you might not be expecting what it does. I can't really give out any more of the story because it's too difficult to do so without giving out spoilers and I don't want to ruin anyone's experience. I'm serious about Toni. If she is not nominated, I will be furious, but there is heavy talk amongst the community of her landing a nomination so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
       I have but one problem with this movie. Some might call the first two-thirds of the movie slow and I can see where they are coming from and can even somewhat agree, but I think that this movie works for those two-thirds because of the family drama elements to it. I cared more about the characters because the movie took its time to add layers to them. Anthony Lane from the New Yorker stated that "It has the nerve to suggest that the social unit is, by definition, self-menacing, and that the home is no longer a sanctuary but a crumbling fortress, under siege from within." He isn't just referring to the paranormal elements that haunt the family inside their house, but rather that the house is metaphoric for the family itself; under siege and crumbling due to the paranormal and, more importantly, internal familial conflict. My other issue delves into spoiler territory so I won't say it here. If you have seen the movie and want to know what I'm talking about then feel free to DM me.
       If you want to get the best experience out of this movie then go into it with an open mind. It'll either terrify you or disappoint you, but because of the hype it has received, it's at least worth a shot. 9.3/10