Promising, gripping and emotionally truthful - let down by an unsatisfying final act

Rating: 7/10 (1 April 2019)

Hereditary is a divisive film that wears its influences and touchstones on its bloody sleeve. An arresting opening sequence as the camera draws in on the family home at the centre of the story - or is it one of the mother's (Toni Collette) model/dolls houses? - sets the tone for a film which constantly sews seeds of doubt in to our minds as to what's real and what's imagined. It's certainly absorbing, and for much of the run time there's a pervasive sense of creeping dread, with the occasional well-executed jump-scare. Half an hour into the film, with our attention taken up with one on-screen crisis the director throws in an out of nowhere gasp-inducing moment; did that really happen? Yes, it did. I shouted out loud when I saw it, alone at home on my laptop at 11 a.m. on a Friday morning; I can only imagine its power in a packed cinema. From there the film starts to explore some familiar thematic territory: maternal guilt, survivors guilt, PTSD, trauma and grief. The film is certainly, largely, emotionally and psychologically truthful as the central family's carefully constructed existence threatens to spiral out of control. Key to this is a captivating central performance from Toni Collette, whose swings from doting mother to something rather more disturbing form the film's core; one dinner table scene in particular is a brilliant portrayal of a family in grief grappling, and failing, to hold themselves together. Notice should also go to Gabriel Byrne as the on-screen father/husband; an understated, quiet performance that is an essential foil for everything to spin off from. The sound and production design throughout is brilliant; the subtle lighting playing with our sense of what may or may not be real. It's in the last 30 minutes that we either commit to the film's ideas or not, allowing its influences of Don't Look Now and (especially) Rosemary's Baby to have their head. For me it doesn't quite work; it feels like one homage too many in a film that nods at much but never quite finds its own identity. The Babadook was a more effective, less talked about, recent horror film on similar themes; the ending of which was perfectly in tune with the story and themes that had gone before The risks taken in Hereditary's last half hour ask us to accept something that is signalled throughout the film but doesn't quite convince. If the ending lived up to what had gone before, this would be a special film indeed; instead it's one to be admired and enjoyed, a sign of good things to come from this director, but ultimately a little unsatisfying.