Less Would Have Been More

Rating: 4/10 (3 March 2020)

This film had potential to be a brilliant psychological study of family tragedy and the failures of communication. Instead it devolved into a second rate creep show that overused gore, death and unexplained revelations. For so much trauma to be visited upon one family gave me horror fatigue during the last half of this film. In a review by NPR, the writer and director Ari Aster, says that he, "wanted the film to function first as a vivid family drama before I even bothered attending to the horror elements". In this aim he certainly does succeed, owing to the brilliant performances of the cast and moments of writing genius. Aster says that the turning point of the film was "designed to operate like a chute that opens up under audience and kind of drops them into hell". Aster also says in a Vanity Fair interview that he "wanted to make a film that served as a serious meditation on grief and trauma." In these objectives he ultimately fails because he uses the gimmick of horror, inspired by Rosemary's Baby, Psycho, and other similar movies, to try take us down a rabbit hole of the supernatural, instead of exploring the non-supernatural horror of their situation. The real terror is invoked by the riveting performances of the actors, especially Toni Collette, whose character's grief and suffering touched me more deeply than desecrated graves, headless corpses and hovering evil monsters ever could. Alex Wolff also gets kudos for his heartbreaking depiction of teenage angst taken to the extremes. But, the supernatural elements of the film left me completely cold. It seemed like the easy way out for Aster who convinced me that he didn't know where to take the real horror that such misfortune can engender.