Chad

Trevor

The first 75% or so is wonderfully made and creepy as heck. But I don’t like the last act much. Another cult/possession reveal, ho hum.

WillieMLF

Oh man, this is one freaky movie....

Shack

Agreed and agreed. This was my second time watching this one. It set up some great stakes in the first half and somehow couldn't follow them through.

Toni Collette is great though. As is the rest of the cast - Just the presence of Ann Dowd raises the movie (and the creepiness factor).

numbercrunch

I think this film is a 10/10 masterpiece of horror. The story is filled with constant tension and I thought the last 15 minutes was a great payoff. The acting was superb, the pacing was never slow, always constant tension building. i think history will look at this one years from now as one of the best horror films of the 2000's

Trevor

Fwiw, here is the main forum discussion on the film. Hopefully my comments are consistent. With my memory, viewings a week apart are like first-time-views.
https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk...-ann-dowd.html

PerryD

The teenage son not getting in trouble for the car accident while stoned seemed like a little bit of a stretch, but maybe pot use is so accepted that it's not considered DUI in the movies. But how the kid just decided to go home and get into bed was chilling.

But, yeah, this movie kind of freaked me out, it did flip from slow dread tone for 80% of the movie to full on b-grade possession movie, and the deaths at the end kind of seemed unbelievable.

mallratcal

Going to watch this soon, I had most of it spoiled for me, but I've been wanting to watch this for a long time.

MysterioMan007

I did not enjoy this much at all...

Toni Collette was great and the shock at the beginning was unexpected, but it didn't really tread any new ground overall. The guy who played the son didn't look like he belonged in this family. The shocking part is that this is the second time he's played Gabriel Byrne's son, yet looks nothing like him or Toni Collette. I did enjoy the parts with the daughter towards the beginning, but as soon as the focus changed, it took me out of the movie. I don't see this one getting much re-watch for me.

jholmes

OH MY GOD! I loved it! I've held off watching it for this challenge. Absolute aces.
The beginning was a bit slow but when it kicked in, it really kicked in.
I'm particularly fond of witchcraft horror, and this was right up there with the best witchcraft movies of all times. Wow! It will take me a bit to digest it.

Acting and production were top notch, but I especially appreciated the originality of the script. I'm still not sure how or why the mom character did a 180. I'll have to think about that.

The little girl was soooo creepy.

9/10 for me.

mallratcal

I loved it too. Turns out not everything was spoiled for me either, so that was nice. The thing at the 35ish minute mark was quite a surprise.

DaveyJoe

Jesus fuck this was terrifying. This is the first time in years I think a movie might give me trouble sleeping.

I interpreted it as a metaphor for mental illness. I've read that an inflated sense of importance(ie a demonic cult crowning and worshipping you) is common in certain types of disorders; and early on in they established something similar with the granmother who passed away. I could be way off base but it's worth considering.

wishbone

Sums it up for me too.

Trevor

There were some powerfully scary and moving moments.

If you didn’t tear up when mom found her daughter in the car, then I don’t know what would make you cry. That was a gut punch.Interesting. I can see that maybe, but still think it detracted from the flow of the film. If it stayed more down to earth this could have been a film of the decade type experience for me. Instead, it will probably stay a memorable near miss.

WillieMLF

This movie really worked for me. If a horror movie is supposed to give you nightmares, then this one payed off in spades. There are really horrific things going on here, and now we have the supernatural thrown in.

I don't think we're too far from one another on the mental illness interpretation. I think there can be multiple veins of interpretation though. It all boils down to the fate that one has inherited, whether that's mental illness or the ascension of King whomever.

I've been monitoring my sleep for the past year, and this movie completely killed my high score.

WillieMLF

This was probably the most difficult moment for me.

Thanks for the link Trevor. Someone commented there that it would have been much more effective without the seance stuff, and I definitely agree. Keeping it more grounded in the here would have make it much more scary.

TheBigDave

It's another great slow burn horror movie. I enjoyed watching it. But like The Witch and House Of The Devil, I don't have an urge to watch them again. Once you know the payoff, it loses it's suspense. Then all you're left with is a slow movie.

Compare that to other great recent horror films like It Follows, Don't Breathe and A Quiet Place. I've already seen those a couple times each, and wouldn't mind watching them again.

inri222

Once the medium is introduced and it shifts gears from psychological drama/thriller to the supernatural, it goes downhill for me.

jholmes

But it was a witchcraft movie from the start. From the mom's funeral, the talk about the "secrets" and the woman who put something in her mouth. So I was waiting for the wtichcraft stuff to actually appear and turn into something.

I do feel the seance bit was rushed. I felt like I wanted more explanation on why so much real phenonmena appeared at Joan's house that first seance. At that point I was expecting her to intro Annie to this "medium" she talked about, and when it was just the two of them, it was strange, like how did "ordinary" Joan suddenly manifest this stuff (that was answered later)? Annie would have heard of seances before, and, if it had been me, I'd want to have more of an explanation why *this one* worked. Ok, there's a piece of paper with some weird language on it, but that was never explored.

And then the next thing we know, Annie's waking up the men in the middle of the night having already cast the spell. I would have liked to see the scene where she first summoned Charlie, maybe partially in disbelief, reading the spell, until something happens. I just needed a little more build-up to the supernatural. Annie is naturally a disbeliever at first and I guess I needed to see a little more of her journey to becoming a believer.

But then, in a lot of this movie, they fill in missing scenes in dialogue later on. Which gives the film a sort of jerkiness with time that's unsettling in a good way. So I can accept the missing stuff, and fill it in in my head, the transition was just a little rough/rushed to me.

However, I love witchcraft films, and expected this to be one, so the fact that it goes from realistic to supernatural didn't really bother me. I would have been very disappointed had it not gone that direction.

This is a good article about the meaning:
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainm...ing-explained#

I love the imagery of the miniatures and the correlation that the family was like a dollhouse because all of this had been set up and "destined" some time ago, so they didn't have agency. And how that's a metaphor for many of the things we "inherit" such as heart disease, mental disorders, etc. They are predetermined and we can't change them.

As for the witchcraft in the film, there were so many images that I found really startling and surprising (ie. the opposite of cliche). I loved that. Like I said, goes to the top of my "favorite witchcraft" films along with "Witch". I watch a lot of old stuff too like The Dunwitch Horror, and I appreciate the hardcore gritty "realism" of Hereditary in its approach to witchcraft. Had shades of medieval witchcraft legends to me.

Impressive Images (spoilers):


Those images are terrifying, surprising, shocking, unique - to me up there with the set pieces of The Exorcist. I won't forget this film anytime soon. So many films are cliche and everything that happens it's like, oh yeah, seen that before. Yeah, knew that was gonna happen. Not here.

DaveyJoe

Here's an article with more information of Paimon, who I had never heard of before this movie:

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT KING PAIMON IN 'HEREDITARY'

I also liked this quote, which is where I was leaning with my interpretation of the film:

rbrown498

I really didn't cotton to this film when I saw it on its opening weekend back in June, but in the intervening months, I kept having the feeling that I was missing something. So I read up on it a bit (and watched a few explanatory YouTube videos), and the second viewing was the charm. I've done a complete 180 on it now, and it's probably my favorite horror film of the year so far. It may just be one of those films that takes more than one viewing to really "get" it. Or maybe watching it in the intimate setting of my living room had something to do with it, since it's a really intimate film. Either way, I'm glad that I rewatched it.

jacob_b

Not sure how I feel about this. The description of the movie plays up on mental health and illness but that last act, I feel, went away from it and turned into a cult/witch craft type movie, kind of like how the Paranormal Activity films did. Not sure how I feel mixing the two. Also kind of curious if Charlie never was killed, beheaded, what would have happened? Obviously the entire thing was an accident (though how manslaughter or any charges never happened is soooo confusing) but if Charlie wasn't beheaded, does that mean the mother would have never beheaded herself? Some of the pieces just don't add up to me.

DaveyJoe

I think the final act craziness is trying to symbolize what it would be like to suffer your first mental breakdown. We don't have to take everything as seen literally, but as if the movie is putting the audience in the shoes of someone suffering from paranoid delusions.

However if you are going for the demon possession route it seems that the cult orchestrated Charlie's death so that Paimon could get the male vessel it initially wanted. A lot of the cult stuff is explained during the grief counselling session where the mother talks about her brother's suicide because their mom kept trying to put people in him.

WillieMLF

I think I read where the director mentioned that the group somehow orchestrated Charlie's death.

Obi-Wanma

The telephone pole that took her head off also had Paimon's symbol inscribed on it.