Hereditary 0

[▫️]

 

Nooo, that wasn’t creepy at all.

[Chip Cataldo]

Weird. Very weird. 

[fastballspecial]

This is getting fantastic reviews from everyone I am going to try to drag my wife to it.

[nearmint]

Saw it Friday night.  The reviews are so positive, many calling it the scariest movie in years, but I didn't find it scary at all.  Rather disappointed. 

[fantastic_four]

Generally enjoyed it, particularly the first 80% of the film, but wow, it sure does change fast during the final act by transitioning very quickly from reality-based horror to the purely supernatural.  It's easy to see how many people could enjoy the first two-thirds but absolutely hate the final part...it's like two entirely different movies jammed into a single one.

[fantastic_four]

I've got one major question about that ending.  I'll put it in a spoiler tag since we're within a month of the film's release.

Spoiler

Why did they dig the grandmother up, why did they behead her, why did they have Annie behead herself, why did they put Charlie's head on the effigy, and why were their headless bodies placed in a kneeling position?  Was it all to just put everything totally over the top, ramping up at an exponential pace from realistic horror to purely supernatural horror?  The reaction in my theater was that there was a boisterous round of snickering laughter when it ended, and I found the whole thing amusing too because it was so exaggeratedly extreme compared to the rest of the film.

 

[Rip]

I need to see this but I've heard it has one of those crazy WTF endings. It got a D+ cinemascore

[fantastic_four]

8 minutes ago, Rip said:

I need to see this but I've heard it has one of those crazy WTF endings. It got a D+ cinemascore

That's a weird score.  I totally get it because the ending stands out like a sore thumb from the rest of the film, but the critical reviews were REALLY good because the first 80% of the movie is absolutely scintillating.  And it's going to be surprising if Toni Collette doesn't get a best actress nomination.

[fantastic_four]

Another thing--isn't the title of the movie DIRECTLY misleading?  Here's what I mean:

Spoiler

For most of the film you're thinking that Toni Collette, her brother who committed suicide, her daughter, and her son have varying flavors of mental disorders that are likely genetically inherited.  But by the end we realize that's probably not it at all, that her brother committed suicide because her mother was trying to get him possessed by that demon, the daughter WAS possessed by the demon, and Collette's character had to live around all of that and her cultish mom her entire life.  So there's nothing really hereditary at all about what's going on, is there?  It all stems from the grandmother being an evil SOB who screws up everyone's lives not via genetic inheritance but through her desire to find a mortal vessel for the demon she's obsessed with.

 

[fantastic_four]

Question about something I can't remember about the sequence of events that I just realized is important as to the film's intent about whether events happen realistically or supernaturally:

Spoiler

At some point there's a scene I vividly recall where they show the symbol of Paimon on that telephone pole that Charlie loses her head to.  Do they show that before or after the accident?  If it's before, then that indicates supernatural influence causing the accident and her death.  If it's after, that could have just been the human cult members marking the scene as significant after they find out it happens.

I think we see that symbol before that huge event, but I don't entirely remember.

Edited June 25, 2018 by fantastic_four

[Rip]

My son saw this recently with a bunch of friends and they said they couldn't stop laughing during the last 20 min. He said the build up was decent, but a bit slow.  

They said it was a great "bad" movie, the perfect MST3K movie.