Needlessly slow - it's just a stupid horror movie

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2019)

The film is well shot. The climax is well made and unnerving. However, the movie wastes your time with the beginning half in which nothing happens. This criticism is unfortunately often misused in films where little action takes place to establish and deepen themes, or analyze characters. However, this movie is not intelligent or creative enough to make use of these periods of slow pacing. It does not contribute to any themes, it does not develop characters - the movie really just starts and ends with the concept of "don't stick your in crazy". Being slow paced and lacking jump scares is not substance in itself.
Comparing this movie to other slower A24 titles like "It Comes At Night", or "The Witch" is incredibly misleading because while those movies were also slow paced, they used that downtime to flesh out themes, to build the tension, and to analyze characters and their motivations. "Hereditary" does none of these things - it just wastes your time in an incredibly stupid manner because I feel as if this movie assumes its viewers are stupid and can't tell the difference anyway. It is incredibly insulting to have someone compare stretches of stupid indulgent trash with more thought out works.
However, I am rating this movie a 6/10 because the climax was well done and unnerving, it's just not particularly subtle or intelligent. The ending was obvious, I saw the twist coming from a mile away. In the end, it's just an okay horror movie brought down by immense pretention with lack of talent to back it up.