Enjoyed the first half but it went nuts towards the end. 5/10

Rating: 5/10 (31 December 2018)

Review:
After reading some good reviews about this film, I finally got to watch it and I must admit, I did find it pretty boring. The weird plot is well written but the ending was strange. Toni Collette puts in a brilliant performance, along with Gabriel Byrne who plays her husband Steve, but there are a lot of scenes that could have easily been taken out because they didn't lead to anything. I did like the deep bass notes throughout the movie, which gave it a mysterious, atmospheric tone and there are some shocking moments which makes the movie unique but it just didn't do it for me. Anyway, the movie starts off with Annie (Toni Collette) burying her mother with her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff) and young daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) Annie takes the death of her secretive mother pretty hard, so she seeks help through a support group for the bereaved. She then thinks she sees an apparition of her mother in her workshop, where she makes miniatures models, but she doesn't make anything of it. Peter then asks his mum to borrow the car to go to a friends party, but his mum will only give him the car if he takes Charlie with him. Charlie doesn't really like mingling with other people but she decides to go with her brother after her mother pushes her to go. Whilst at the party, Charlie eats cake containing nuts, which she is allergic to, and falls into anaphylactic shock which makes it hard for her to breathe. As Peter drives her to the hospital, Charlie leans out of the window for air but Peter swerves to avoid a dead dear and Charlie is decapitated by a telephone pole. In, shock, Peter silently drives home and leaves his sister's corpse in the car for their mother to discover the next morning. The death of Charlie puts a strain on Annie and Steve's marriage and causes tension between Annie and Peter. At the support group, Annie becomes friends with another member called Joan (Ann Dowd), who teaches Annie to perform a seance to communicate with Charlie. Back at home, Annie wakes from a nightmare and convinces her family to attempt the seance. Objects begin to move and break, terrifying Peter and Charlie, and Annie becomes possessed until Steve douses her with water. Annie suspects that Charlie's spirit has become malevolent, so she tried to get some advice from Joan, who has mysteriously vanished. Annie notices that Joan's welcome mat resembles her mother's craftwork, so she goes through her mother's possessions and finds a photo album which links Joan to her mother Ellen. The book also contains information about a demon named Paimon, who wishes to inhabit the body of a male host. In the attic, Annie finds Ellen's decapitated body with strange symbols on the wall written in blood. From here I was totally lost and confused. Although the whole movie seemed spooky and mysterious, I didn't have a clue about what was going on, and when Peter started to slam his head against his desk, I really didn't know what direction the rest of the film was going to go in. To make matters worse, Annie also becomes possessed and starts going nuts on Peter, and after she chops her own head off with piano wire, they all end up in Charlie's treehouse, with Peter becoming some sort of King. Anyway, from a supernatural/horror point of view, it's full suspense through the first half of the movie but the director seemed to have lost the plot towards the end. It does have it's good points, like the whole grieving process and the way that the family is torn apart because of Annie's founding but apart from that, I was lost towards the end. It's still worth a watch because of the great performances and the fact that you actually care about the characters but I was disappointed with the outcome. Average!
Round-Up:
This is the first major release from director Ari Aster, so it's hard to compare his work to anything else. There isn't a planned sequel to this movie, even though Peter seems to have become some sort of king towards the end, but he must be impressed with the profit that it made at the box office. Although it wasn't my cup of tea, it was one of the big surprises for 2018, alongside A Quiet Place which was also in the same genre.
Budget: $10million
Worldwide Gross: $79million
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Mallory Bechtel and Jake Brown. 5/10