It is creepy, suspensful and intelligent family horror story

Rating: 7/10 (3 June 2018)

This film is a successful horror at several levels. The screenplay contains at least two different basic aspects, each of them are intersting on its own, but writer and director Ari Aster is able to fuse it into a powerful but standalone story, using not your average jumpscares but a great suspense-building.
On the surface "Hereditary" is rather a family drama than horror, the whole storyline focuses on a members of one family with dark past. Toni Colett does a great acting here, and truly sparks the screen. The film invests a lot in characters, since it's only a handful of them here, so don't expect immediate drive into the ghosts activity or demonic posession. It's a film about dissolution of a one particular famliy, and such process Asters shows with great attention to the details. There's no direct social commentary here, it's rather about personal degeneration and desperation, about the past that still haunts.
Under all this dramatic surface lies great modern horror, made with respect to classical themes and style. As story goes by, transition from family drama to occult horror begins, and Aster manages to procced it smoothly. A lot of traditional horror elements (such as disturbing dreams, bizarre rites, and so on) can be found here, but this film relies more on the of tension and eerie logic of the events than on conventional jumpscares or blood and guts.
Overall, it's a great slow-burner, made with all respect to genre fans, and luckily escaping most of the cliches - a rare film among contemporary horror films. if you like dark and nervous movies with acting over SFX, put this one on your watch list.