I feel ripped off

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2018)

The build-up to this film -- the trailers, publicity, advance reviews -- had all led me to believe I was going to the cinema to see the best horror film of 2018, something potentially in the same league as Friedkin's "The Exorcist", or Kubrick's "The Shining". But "Hereditary" doesn't deliver the goods.
Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne deliver credible performances, but sadly they are let down by the weakness of the storytelling, which never rises above the trite and obvious. In fact, this film is such a maladroit mash-up of established horror tropes, I could be convinced the plot was generated algorithmically.
I experienced a couple of mild jump-scares, and was grossed-out a few times; but overall, this film not only failed to inspire a sense of horror in me, it also failed to attain the suspension of disbelief that is prerequisite to genuine horror.
Some scenes and effects are so poorly executed, they are actually laugh-out-loud funny rather than scary.
I cannot account for the praise that has been lavished on this film, or for the high ratings that it currently has on social media sites, except to suppose that the studio has paid a small army of online sock-puppets to generate hype. I expect this will be corrected in coming weeks, as more and more disappointed film-goers make their feelings known.