Hereditary (2018) Review
“Every family tree hides a secret.”Synopsis: After the family matriarch passes away, a grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences, and begins to unravel dark secrets. | ![]() Watch now on Amazon |
Ludwig von Stroodle:
Grandma dies, weird things happen, and the family (including Gabriel Byrne and Toni Collette) loses their shit. It’s tense and creepy, with a fantastic score and a couple unusually disturbing scenes. The cinematography was great; from the opening scene everything just felt ominous. Hereditary was well done, but I didn’t like it. My gripe is that there isn’t enough context for what’s happening until the very end. So the first hour and fifty minutes is largely a slow montage of family dysfunction and a few supernatural happenings that don’t make any sense at all until the conclusion. I’m glad they managed to salvage it by tying it all together, but the payoff doesn’t make up for the time spent wondering what’s going on.
I like a twist ending when they’re done well, but the movie should be enjoyable before the twist too. The surprise shouldn’t be “Aha! We had a plot the whole time and you had no idea!” And really, I wouldn’t call the end of Hereditary a twist so much as necessary information that would have provided context for what I just spent 2 hours watching. It severely undermined my enjoyment of the movie; none of the creepy stuff had any impact because it just seemed random.
I have no doubt that the movie would be more interesting if I watched it a second time, but I just don’t want to.
Ludwig von Stroodle’s Rating: C+
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