The Movie Hereditary, directed by Ari Aster, is about a demon named Paimon who slaughters an entire family. At the beginning of the movie, the family's grandma dies. The grandma was very secretive and, as we later find out, she was a follower of Paimon. The youngest daughter acts in very weird ways (such as cutting a dead bird's head off with scissors and keeping it in her pocket) and sees apparitions of the grandma all the time. Then later in the film the same daughter gets decapitated by a phone pole in a "tragic accident". The mother is then taught by some "stranger" how to summon the daughter's spirit through a seance. This is the point in the movie where the shit finally hits the fan. In the end, the mother dies, the father dies, and the son dies... all because Paimon didn't like his current host. The full story is much more complex than this and to needs an essay of its own to be fully analyzed. One thing that I noticed was the movie was almost entirely shot with low key lighting. This was presumably to add the spookiness of the movie. Another thing I noticed was how good the acting was, especially from the mother. One criticism of the movie is the amount of time it actually takes to get to the juicy parts. The movie is mostly just a sad story until the hour fifteen mark. However, the audience does not seem to care because Hereditary made $79.3 million at the box office with a budget of only $10 million.
One of my favorite aspects of Hereditary is the incredible transitions throughout the movie. In the opening scene of the movie, there is a miniature model of a house that seamlessly transitions into the real room. Another cool transition was about halfway through the movie. The camera has a full view of the house, and then night turns to day in a split second. The movie uses callbacks to earlier events in the film very effectively. This makes watching the movie feel so much more rewarding because of the attention to detail the director had. The soundtrack was also very effective. I found myself several times being scared because of the music alone, even if nothing ended up happening. I also really like how the movie kept a lot of information from the viewer in order to give the ending a massive plot twist. This movie was, without a doubt, the scariest movie I've ever watched, and the movie didn't use a single jump scare. I rate this movie a good good.
For anyone interested in watching, here is the trailer:
No comments:
Post a Comment