Beautiful and smart horror/drama

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2019)

"it's heartening to see so many new faces here today, I know my mom would be very touched and probably a little suspicious"
PLOT: After the death of their secretive grandmother, a family experiences increasingly harrowing and demonic events that tie into their past.
This movie is one of the only horror films that has scenes that have truly stuck with me and keep me up at night. I nearly wanted to leave the theater, and I mean that in the best way.
It stars Toni Collette as Annie, Alex Wolff as Peter, Milly Shapiro as Charlie and Gabriel Byrne as Steve.
This is a slow-burn film, it's not constant jump scares and non stop horror, instead what we get here is a family drama that slowly unravels into a terrifying nightmare of a horror film. It has beautiful cinematography and some incredibly disturbing and well written scenes. The film is also very complex and easy to watch over and over, it is also beneficial to watch it more than once since you'll see things you missed the first time!
Toni Collete's performance as Annie was oscarworthy, and I wish she would've been nominated for best actress. Arguably one of the most scary and well acted scenes in the film is when she screams at Peter at the dinner table.
Her facial expressions just perfectly describe the horrors she goes through in this film.
The dream sequence with Annie and Peter is disturbing and I love how you can't tell if it's a dream until the end of it.
Alex Wolff's performance as Peter is also incredibly well acted and super sad, I wish they included some of the deleted scenes such as the one where he asks if Steve also blames him for Charlie's death.
The camera work is excellent and very atmospheric, my favorite shot was when the camera was upside down focusing on Annie running through the halls to Joan's apartment after finding out Joan's bond with Annie's mother.
The diorama shots and the very last shot are also really beautiful, it's amazing how sometimes the camera zooms into one of the diorama and it turns into the actual location.
The film has a beautifully haunting score composed by Colin Stetson, it makes every scene feel even more bone chilling and scary. my favorite song in the film was the one at the very end in the attic called "Reborn", it fits the setting well and is chilling yet gorgeous.
I was surprised and unnerved when Charlie died from getting hit by the pole in the film as everyone expected her to be there throughout the film. it was a super cool twist, and Peter's reaction to what just happened was incredibly realistic and I love how the shot lingers on his face for 30 seconds.
It's also strange how chilling the scene when Peter is smoking weed with his friends is, it just feels very eerie.
This film has a fantastic ending with the demon Paimon taking over Peter's body and going into the treehouse to find all of his followers bowing to him. And the entire ending was like a callback to the 1968 film "Rosemary's Baby", it also has similar vibes to the 2015 film The VVITCH, which also has some of the same producers.
Over all it is a must see and one of the best Horror/Drama films I've ever seen and it will definitely be watched and analyzed a lot more by me, 5 out of 5 stars.
Thank you for reading!