“Hereditary” is an accomplished horror film—but not a masterpiece

By N.B.

AT THE very start of “Hereditary”, the camera glides across an artist’s studio full of meticulously constructed miniature rooms and houses. With a soundtrack of ominous violin shivers and double-bass groans, the camera approaches one of those miniature rooms, getting closer and closer until the viewer is somehow peering into an actual full-sized bedroom in which an actual boy is sleeping. This directorial sleight-of-hand does two things. First, it hints that the characters themselves live in a kind of doll’s house, as playthings of some powerful unseen force. Second, it promises that “Hereditary” is going to be pretty damn stylish compared to most Friday-night horror films.

Sure enough, the debut feature from Ari Aster joins “Get Out”, “A Quiet Place”, “The Witch”, “It Follows” and others in the new wave of scary movies which are just as suited to an art-house cinema as they are to a multiplex. Unlike so many of the last decade’s biggest horror films, they aren’t designed to establish lucrative long-running franchises or to appeal primarily to teenagers and diehard gore fans. They were conceived as idiosyncratic one-offs which evoke the genre’s revered 1960s and 1970s classics. By letting an air of supernatural menace seep slowly into a cosy but already tense domestic setting, “Hereditary” summons the unquiet spirits of “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) and “The Stepford Wives” (1975), both of which were adapted from novels by Ira Levin.

As in those films, the protagonist is a married American woman. Specifically, she is Annie Graham (Toni Colette), the sculptor who crafts those miniature houses: dioramas, we discover, depicting key moments in her life. Her latest series of artworks concerns the failing health of her mother, who has just died, but it’s not exactly a loving tribute. The two women’s relationship was difficult, bordering on murderously hostile, as becomes clear when Annie delivers a passive-aggressive funeral eulogy which is a lot more aggressive than passive. When the Grahams return from the funeral to their perpetually gloomy wood-panelled house, most of them seem relieved that the secretive and eccentric old woman is no longer sharing it. Annie gets back to her dioramas; her stolid husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) reminds everyone to take their shoes off so as not to scuff the floorboards; and the couple’s stoner son Peter (Alex Wolff) plans to chat up a classmate at a party. The only family member who is really upset is Peter’s freakily sombre 13-year-old sister (Milly Shapiro), who was a little too close to her grandmother for comfort—certainly too close for Annie’s comfort.

But maybe, one way or another, the Grahams haven’t seen the last of their late matriarch. The day after the funeral, Steve gets a call from the cemetery to say that the grave has been desecrated. Meanwhile, Annie opens a cardboard box of her mother’s possessions and finds a yellow hardback entitled “Notes on Spiritualism”. Then there are the apparitions that people keep glimpsing in the corners of rooms, and the demonic words scrawled on the wallpaper. And then there are...well, let’s just say that there is a mystery behind the ordeal which the Grahams endure throughout “Hereditary”, but the bigger mystery is why none of them works out what is going on a bit sooner.

Viewers may not guess every specific—because the specifics are wonderfully bizarre—but the sinister conspiracy plot is far less surprising than the one in “Get Out”, for instance. It is less original and resonant, too. The film sometimes pretends to be a classical tragedy about bereavement, motherhood and mental illness, but with its regular scares and its rudimentary plotting, “Hereditary” is fundamentally a hokey Halloween haunted-house chiller, complete with spooks, séances and people who are foolish enough to run upstairs rather than out of the door when they’re being chased.

Still, if it isn’t quite the masterpiece which was heralded by early reviews, it is undeniably a confident and accomplished debut. It sustains an atmosphere of dread which is truly chilling. A major factor in this is Ms Colette’s unbridled performance as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown: at times Annie’s pain and outrage are so intense that you may feel awkward about intruding on her private trauma. Beyond that, the doom-laden music, the low lighting and the steady pacing all deepen the impression that Mr Aster is lowering the family into an endless hell of guilt and grief. When it comes down to it, of course, he is the powerful unseen force which is toying with the Grahams. He does so without mercy.