Hereditary
[Blu-ray/DVD]
In a way, I feel bad for the movie Hereditary. Partly because it’ll never get the feedback it deserves for its creators to really make a great follow-up, but also because this is a perfect example of a movie killing itself through its own advertisement.
Before it was even released, Hereditary was presented as the new scariest movie of all time, the new Exorcist, and how watching it will basically ruin your life because it’s so scary. And of course, nothing is really that scary. At least, after being set up like this, there’s no way a smart audience is actually going to be THAT scared. So, one shot against Hereditary involves its audience actually having heard of it, not to mention watching the trailers which were generated just to cheaply manipulate its audience (stark out-of-context visuals and sound effects that don’ actually occur anyway in the movie itself). You’re telling me this is the scariest movie of all time? Well we’ll see about that.
The second more important reason why Hereditary was just an average movie was that it’s trying to pretend it’s scary. The reason why old scary movies like the Exorcist (which its advertisement INSISTS it’s better than) worked was that it dealt with a topic most of us are familiar with, and that’s Christianity. Hereditary, when it tries to get to the heart of its story (after a pretty compelling first half, might I add), is about paganism, which we’re unfamiliar with. And guess what — any new religion which you’re unfamiliar with sounds dumb. So, this movie s trying to scare its audience with something they’re completely unfamiliar with, so it all falls apart at the end. What we’re left with is an interesting setup, jump scares, unexplained imagery, and a very silly and confusing ending. A real scary movie gets to the core and shakes you. This one is pretending to be smarter than it is.
Sorry, Hereditary. You could have been a contender. Try not to spoil yourself next time.
