HEREDITARY (2018) *

Hereditary made a big splash at Sundance.  The buzz surrounding the film led to several rave reviews.  It even made a tidy sum at the box office.  Me being me came late to the party and just watched it one lazy evening on Netflix.  

I had purposefully stayed away from the previews.  I wanted to go into it as cold as possible.  All I knew is that Toni Collette had a fucked-up family and that’s about it.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.  

As it turns out, Hereditary is one of those movies where nothing happens for long stretches at a time.  Everyone speaks in whispers and the soundtrack drones on and on, lulling you into a zombie state of sleep. Then… WHAM!!!  There’s a big noise indicating some sort of alleged horror has occurred to wake you up.  You’re then forced to rewind and figure out what you missed, only to learn you really didn’t miss all that much. This happened to me at least twice during the first forty minutes of the film. 

Hereditary is also one of those movies where you think it’s almost over, but then you press the INFO button on your remote and are dismayed to learn there’s a whopping forty minutes left to go.  It moves at a fucking snail’s pace for over two goddamn hours while you wait for something… anything remotely scary or horrifying to happen.  The final reel, which features some of the dumbest shit this side of a Japanese horror flick, is a total joke.  Seriously, did this thing need to be 127 freaking minutes?  I think not.

I went into the movie cold.  Even though I pretty much hated it, I’ll spare you the plot rundown.  I won’t spoil what it’s about, or even what happens.  Then again, there’s not a whole lot to spoil because not a lot happens to begin with.

I can in good conscience say that Collette is quite amazing.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she got nominated for an Oscar as she is completely off the rails.  Whether chewing out her son at the dinner table or having a wicked case of sleepwalking, she takes things to 11. 

The problem is that no one else in the cast comes close to matching her.  Gabriel (End of Days) Byrne barely registers as her sad sack husband.  Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro are both thoroughly irritating as her unlikeable children.  Then again, maybe that was on purpose.  I guess the filmmakers wanted the audience to hate them as much as Collette’s character does.