i'm not going to post a trailer or any of the promo material on the off chance that someone can go into this completely blind.
this movie fucked me up. very much from the same vein as The Witch, in terms of it being a hyper film literate tone poem of a horror movie that is staggering both in its expert craftsmanship and insanely unsettling efficacy. one of the scariest movies i've ever seen. toni colette is so fucking good in this.
go see this in the emptiest theater possible.
Super hyped. Ari Aster's made some really great off-the-wall short films that always showed the promise that he had a movie like this in him.
Cannot wait to see this. My friend hated it, hated The Witch as well, so I'm quite positive I'm going to love it (he and I divide on modern horror pretty evenly - he loved A Quiet Place, for instance.)
Quote from: eward on June 11, 2018, 08:04:34 AM
he loved A Quiet Place
friends don't let friends love A Quiet Place.
i had almost completely forgotten krasinski's war crime of a movie. the thought of Hereditary being compared to that unfavorably is making my blood pressure rise.
He has generally good taste otherwise. But man I can't tell you how many people I temporarily alienated at work when I went on my vitriolic tirade against A Quiet Place the morning after I saw it* - everyone else seemed to be in awe of the film, and didn't really talk to me much for the rest of the day.
*actually, I can. It was only a handful, but it felt like everyone.
Well that was creepy as fuck. Jesus. Still wrapping my head around it but goddamn what an experience! Can't wait to take some unsuspecting friends along with me for a seconding viewing.
One very quiet moment in particular made the whole audience GASP.
Didn't get much sleep last night, thanks to this little gem. Can't wait to see it again. Also Bret Easton Ellis loves it: "Ari Aster's HEREDITARY is not only the movie of the year but one of the scariest, most upsetting horror movies ever made--a true freak-out. It's a great debut, novelistic in scope and a polarizing, brilliant, beautiful nightmare. Toni Collette and Alex Wolff are magnificent."
This movie is excellent.
I went into it with absolutely no knowledge about it. Zero. I caught an early matinee and was the only person in the theater. Eward's post describes it best -- it was an absolute fucking freakout.
I'm not surprised to see a lot of comparisons to The Witch here. It shares many similarities with that one -- not just thematic either, but also in the structure and pacing. I saw so many parallels that I think that Egger's movie had to have played a big influence on this.
Dealing with the kind of supernatural subject matter that both the Witch and Hereditary do can be quite precarious for a movie. You're just a hair's breadth away from becoming ridiculous at any moment. Eggers pulled it off flawlessly, IMO, with a directorial virtuosity that continues to astound me. On the other hand, I thought Hereditary stumbled in a couple instances into dangerous territory. Aster, to his credit, does manage to quickly steer it back on track though.
Another minor criticism I have is with the movie's ambiguity. To again compare it with The Witch, that movie, though it invites varying and even contradictory interpretations, was very unambiguous. After you see it, you don't question what, if anything, represented onscreen was real and what wasn't. It was all real. With Hereditary, I'm not sure what the hell really happened. I know a lot of people actually like that quality in a movie, and I do too sometimes, but I'm bothered by it in this case. I guess it's more a statement of personal preference than a criticism.
Minor quibbles aside, I thought this movie was fucking amazing. I don't think I've ever been this fucked up by a movie at a theater. It took me a good 20 minutes or so to come back to down to Earth after I left this one.
This was okay.
It had some cool scenes, but in the end it was just mimicking better horror movies.
It suffered from too much boring "what the fuck is happening" that when it comes together, you're just like "that was it?".
I was hoping to be scared more too. There's like two decent scares in the whole thing.
Quote from: RegularKarate on June 21, 2018, 11:31:15 AM
This was okay.
It had some cool scenes, but in the end it was just mimicking better horror movies.
It suffered from too much boring "what the fuck is happening" that when it comes together, you're just like "that was it?".
I was hoping to be scared more too. There's like two decent scares in the whole thing.
Yes.
It's a real issue these days. Movies mimicking movies. And not in a meta way. Tarantino's life is made of movies. With Jurrasic World, etc, you can see fanboy filmaking, but this one is also the competent movie of a fanboy. Hereditary doesn't care about...heredity. It cares about its winks and twists.
Welp, maybe this one required a theatrical viewing. Did not have the impact on me that it's had on so many others.
There's one particular sequence that was deeply affecting and masterfully done. Otherwise, I was constantly going back and forth between "this is very intriguing and unsettling" and "this is a bunch of nonsense." And that's probably on me, because it's an issue I have with a lot of horror movies.
If you loved The Witch, this is worth seeking out.
I like a well-made horror film, but this wasn't one of them for me. I didn't see it in a theater, either, but I'm not sure that would have improved it much in my eyes. One of the worst endings I've encountered in a very long time.
JB, I'd like to know what you think of Hereditary Director Ari Aster's short film from 2011 "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons". It's very Solondzian and weird. Anyone seen this?
NSFW
https://vimeo.com/155016328 (https://vimeo.com/155016328)
masterpiece.
Yea, I'm with Alexandro. Best film of the year so far for me.
Certainly in my top five of the year. Would like to watch this again on a small screen though and see how it plays. Both times I saw it in jam-packed theaters with fairly receptive audiences and it was hard to not be taken by the collective energy.
finally saw this on blu. creepy, well made horror. can't say the experience was as jubilant as some of the posts here claim, don't think the 127-minute run time is warranted, but a good flick nonetheless. it's a lot of buildup in the second act for a payoff that felt slightly short changed. the familial psychological warfare was the most interesting stuff, in addition to all three female performances, it's just too bad gabriel byrne's character was undercut as a result to fit the concerned patriarchal stereotype. other than the absence of any law enforcement for some of the events, i wasn't too big on how the understanding of the entire plot hinged on a few flashes of pages in a book. miss those few seconds and by the time the end comes you're completely fucked. i can see where comparisons with the witch come in to play, i think this one is heavier on the horror and not bogged in outdated language. don't think seeing it in a theatre would have made a difference, was freaked out enough alone in a dark room.