Good start up, then it turned into artsy-fartsy nonsense.

Rating: 5/10 (15 June 2018)

I enjoy coherent storylines, great acting, good jump scares. Not this movie. Hereditary is one of the more interesting haunting movies I've seen in a while. The problem being this film falls into a lot of same tired tropes and cliches those do.
"The story focuses on the Graham, where the mom and wife Annie has just lost her mother". Honestly, the first synopsis said this, but then it also said something along the lines of "but a series of events will unravel their families deep past and her mothers crimes": something like that. I'd wanna see that movie, maybe something like the Wrecked film with Adrian Brody, where his amnesia starts to disappear and his crimes are brought to light. Instead we have, mediums and some ghosts. And really, what did the name hereditary have to do with the film anyway; did it just sound cool?
Some good things I liked included Toni Collette's performance, which isn't surprising, I've loved her since I saw The Sixth Sense the first time. I even enjoyed Millie Shapiro's performance as the daughter, for the screen time she was given. Other than that, none of the other actors stand out. The film stars Nat Wolff's brother Alex Wolff, and I thought he'd be great in this, but he just wasn't. I think he was miscast in this. None to mention his performance is either underperformed or overacted. Worst thing about his performance in this are all the scenes where he's meant to be crying, and he was straight up acting like he was mocking someone crying, not actually crying, made me laugh.
As for all the other stuff I didn't like: the movie felt too long right off the bat. There are scenes that are meant build some kind of intensity and a spooky atmosphere, but it lingers on the shot too long and all the tension disappears. It got annoying at a point.
And I won't spoil the ending, but it left me scratching my head down to the bone. I say this a lot, but it legitimately felt like the director thought of it on the spot. Unless there's a sequel coming to explain all this, I'm just completely lost. I recently saw Mother! with Jennifer Lawrence and I could instantly tell it was a metaphor or interpretation of biblical scripture; what was this movies message; if your daughters a weirdo, she'll bring about the anti-christ or something? The ending was getting flashes of Only God Forgives just watching it, it was that artsy-fartsy "Oh....what does it mean?"
Not a film I'm gonna watch again anytime soon. I'd say watch it if you want a good. set up and a laughable pay off
6 out of 10