God Save Ari Aster!

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2018)

It's all true. Ari Aster's psychologically brutal and unnerving directorial debut is a supernatural film feat conjured up by a convincing perspective that extracts from spiritism, demonology and necromancy a sufficiently disturbing mythology to perturb your mind with one of the best developed indie horror films of the new century, there are visual and storytelling magic. It's insufficient to say that it gets under your skin as soon as the credits roll, leaving a bad omen and unusual insecurity today in films that only will get away with a sinister tongue-clicking noise. The darkest perversity lurks behind familiar faces.
Little known among the mainstream audiovisual world, Aster - New York, 1987 - began to carve out a niche for himself in the field with his meaningful and bizarre short films ("The Strange Thing About The Johnsons"), those that were enough inducements for production company A24 to grant its support to make possible his outstanding, scary debut into the world of celluloid. Credited as the single director and screenwriter - a strangely uncommon guarantee bearing in mind the unbelievable fruits, - this American filmmaker, an absolute new prey for the major studios, consolidates his idea and career with overwhelming solvency, exquisite certainty and necessary tranquility to freak us out; the control he has over the cinematographic tools he possesses is masterful, it's perceptible with every strange, purposeful scene in which the command of camera, script and actors become cardinal handholds to confer tremendous impact on a darkly penetrating family tragedy seen from the outside, but with a sharper review lies an inquisitive and traumatizing story of loss, forgiveness, sanity, family, union and, best of all, human and inhuman demons.
The 2018 Sundance Film Festival was the first to build the wings to this psychological horror film to fly high, provoking an uncommon buzz for the genre since Jennifer Kent's "The Babadook" premiered in the 2014 edition at midnight. Universal acclaim diffused by an effervescent mouth-to-mouth, critics' reviews or festival attendees' comments that crammed social media; honors geared directly toward the endeavor of two people in particular: Toni Collette and Ari Aster; but that would be a clearly shrink, incorrect avowal minimizing the set of visceral strengths constituting an incredible whole.
Broadly speaking, the first big step corresponds to the excellent plot writing. As a good modern-day horror flick, the argumental lifeblood is found when you delve deeper its faÃ§ade, the treasure about everybody are talking is in the metaphorical content, cloaked by obscurity and restlessness weaving the film. This entails a strong, intrinsic necromantic approach to the spiritual world, in fact, this is the main propeller of the plot; also, besides this fruitful, appealing core theme, a pessimistic and powerful family drama takes place, through which conscientiously walk mental health issues, mourning, pain, family chains, the importance of being part of a group and the responsibility it involves. But as a good modern-day horror flick, it must also work just as well if it's watched from the outside, and here all the elements are in the precise order to a nerve-racking experience for the most unwilling viewer, of course, patience arises as the main requirement. On that subject is where it works at its best. From the beginning, it sets up what kind of atmosphere the filmmaker will handle throughout the film, for example, as tension-builder master David Robert Mitchell did in "It Follows." The opening scene with a panning movement alongside Annie's working room, the lead role, urges to plunge into her miniature haunted house, a place where death really means death. This is a resource the film mostly respects, showing it with the importance the spectator requires, because unlike "It Comes At Night" by Trey Edward Shults from the same production house, The most hard-to-watch scenes don't end up being a kind of vision or nightmare sooner or later, the story takes them down as a significant and irreversible reality, is the fate of the game, a future marked by King Paymon; once you're selected, you cannot do anything.

The film, as a whole, is a frightening and constantly shocking experience, however, being objective and selective, there are about five sequences simply rewarding, frame after frame with a pace and a surprise factor pathetically horrific that leaves you with your mouth wide open for more than an entire minute, you certainly don't understand why that just happened, but once you're sufficiently related to the characters and the mythology, this fantastic state of shock makes sense. In said sequences, the great affection and respect to the big, seldom-remembered horror classics through narrative executions are noticeable, however, "Annabelle: Creation" came to my mind at the time when we all literally lose our heads; Edward Shults' psychological horror thriller also got reminiscences obviously; "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" in its natural ability to disturb in no time at all or Robert Eggers' incredible unsettling debut with "The VVitch: a New-England Folktale," and there are a lot of similarities in there.

That ending, that ending is as mind-boggling and irrationally powerful as firs-timer Eggers's. An insane, schizophrenic third act prepares the ground for a monumental conclusion, one neatly written, astonishing and exciting splashing drops of horror situation after another. The tension is visceral and well-built, it makes you uncomfortable even when apparently nothing happens on screen; that ending is, without stock, one of the best in a real horror film since 2016. Drawing on grimoires to a tragedy plot is a tricky task and whoever wants to set a film on it should be sufficiently prepared and aware that it must deliver a coherent, cohesive and juicy story, faithful to the difficult supporting material and the hopes of the most loyal moviegoers. It bets on the anger and the search of one of the kings of hell: Paimon, who with 200 legions to govern, an ostentatious crown, a dromedary and an effeminate face, is considered one of the most obedient to Lucifer. If you thoroughly investigate who he is and his purposes, most of the complex narrative will get meaning, well, most of it, for sure; and although it seems that the magic of the film ends here, there is still some metaphorical study material to break down, in which it's necessary to decipher what's true and what's not. Is all this really about a mental illness legacy? family issues? is this just an enraged demon?
It's not hyperbole: Toni Collette does deserve an Oscar; if you need proof, just buy a movie ticket, if you need proof, pay special attention to that magnanimous monologue in the grief support group or that "usual" family discussion at the table. Conquering with the most risky and sinister role of her career, "Krampus" actress delivers one of the best distressed-mother performances of all time, as well as a terrifying interpretation in relation to the nuances and demands of the character, there are dramatic peaks that the Oscar-nominated actress reaches with incredible ease, out-of-rational-control scenes in which this talented woman overflows pure talent. She's not a hackneyed crying-out-loud person, before all that, she's a morally-ambiguous mother possible only due to the traumatized, haunted behavior this brilliant Australian actress endows Annie; she directs most of the story to hand over control to a new and magnificent actor who's a revelation. Collette must remain the face of this unsettling film because this is rightly her moment, her tour-de-force has arrived.
The same level of diffuseness and complexity put into the narrative, are in the creepy imagery. One of the best aspects of this bestial family nightmare is the powering, discomforting creativeness bathering every picture. Without hesitation, I ratify that even the minor element on screen has a narrative purpose that will mean a handhold for the next move/twist a few scenes later, and while much of that reinforcement is packed in the script, there are also several shots visually. In the very last minutes of the feature, we already are familiar with that beautifully spooky wooden house, we know the position of each room, where the loft, Annie's work area, the kitchen, the dining room and, of course, that scary tree house are, an amazing achievement possible by the excellent camera work. "Don't Breathe" by Fede Alvarez focused on elements that will be key pieces later, similarly this movie insinuates the importance on select utensils and visual tools that will make sense sometime later. Pay extreme attention to find the feats of the artistic field at the narrative level. Pawel Pogorzelski's cinematography doesn't accept improvements; the way he alternates colors, shades, radical changes of atmosphere always influenced by an adjacent darkness. Colin Stetson creates dreamlike, nightmarish compositions, having the opportunity to empower the most bizarre scenes in which his meaningful melodies steal the spotlight; it's a warning of what is coming, zero tranquility and one hundred per cent tribulation, a score true to its source that paralyzes your senses.
No doubt, "Hereditary" by Ari Aster is one of the films of the year due to first-class performances - even bandying about a would-be Academy Award or Golden Globe nomination, - a superb direction for a horror film and a slow-burning story of demons, dark secrets and legacies, a movie with a schizophrenic and psychologically effective pace that advances at full speed under the surface as a bone-crushing beast, willing to damage our dreams, and it has made it. Viscerally unpredictable, visually terrifying and well developed, Ari Aster is this year's Robert Eggers owing to one of the most beautifully unsettling films of the year and the decade.