No scares or thrills in this dopey tale of family possessed by the devil

Rating: 3/10 (7 December 2018)

It's called "Hereditary," and if you have any appreciation for good cinema, you must avoid it like the plague. Created by a horror aficionado, first-time feature director Ari Aster, Hereditary has managed to garner an incredible "87" on Metacritic. Don't ask me for certain why this has come to pass, but usually such reviews can be tied to the mass of misguided critics who populate both the print and online media.

The film stars Australian actress Toni Collette, who plays a beleaguered artist-mother Annie Graham, presiding over a family of misfits including her 13 year old daughter Charlie, who appears to suffer from Asperger's Syndrome, and Peter, a disaffected 16 year old who spends a good deal of time smoking marijuana. There's also the passive husband, Steve, who doesn't have much of a plan for saving the family from demonic forces.

When we first meet Annie, she's attending the funeral of her mother with the rest of the family. It's later revealed that the grandmother was some sort of devil worshiper who is responsible for turning Charlie into the disturbed child whose problems no one can find a way to ameliorate.

When Charlie freaks out at a party frothing at the mouth, Peter, high on marijuana. tries to bring her to the hospital driving furiously down a darkened road in the family SUV. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, Charlie is decapitated when she sticks her head outside the window and is hit by an emerging telephone pole.

The abject stupidity of Aster's script becomes apparent when Annie discovers Charlie's headless body the next morning. One wonders what happened to the police investigation but no intrepid investigating detectives show up at the house and Peter is left depressed with his mother unable to control her anger toward him.

The plot has a mildly interesting twist when Annie befriends Joan, a woman she meets at a support group for parents of deceased children. Later Annie finds a scrapbook with pictures of Joan and her mother together in devil worshiping ceremonies.

Nothing much makes sense after that. When Steve throws the grandmother's scrapbook into the fire, he explodes into a ball of fire. Joan disappears and eventually Peter kills himself by jumping out the window of the house. Annie beheads herself with a piano wire, Peter's corpse is inhabited by a spirit and they all convene in Charlie's tree house, where Joan hails Peter as Paimon, one of the Devil's Princes. Women's liberation takes a backseat after Peter is hailed as the new prince--liberated from Charlie, whose decapitated corpse represents a female host.

The worst part of the film is there are really no likable characters, as they all eventually morph into disciples of the devil. The potential heroine, Annie, ends up like all the others in the family. I suppose horror films are supposed to scare you-this one will only make you laugh!!!!