After screening at the Sundance Film Festival this month, Ari Aster’s Hereditary has been receiving rave reviews with many praising it as one of the scariest films of the year. It’s only Janaury! It’s always bittersweet to learn of a film being described in such a way; either it will be the scariest film of the year, or you’ll be setting yourself up to be disappointed. Hopefully, it’s the former.
Synopsis:
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited. Making his feature debut, writer-director Ari Aster unleashes a nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.
A24 has an impressive set of films on its distribution list – Green Room, The Witch, The Blackcoat’s Daughter to name a few – so we do have high hopes for Hereditary. Make sure you catch the film when it is released on 8th June 2018. The film stars Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro.
Words: Jessy Williams (@JessyCritical)
