Empty, Soulless, Stupid

Rating: 3/10 (3 July 2019)

I was like a lot of them-I had this sucker reserved for a spot in my top ten this year as soon as I stopped watching the trailer half way through.
This is a movie with empty promises. There might have been a wonderful idea at some point, but this made water torture sound like a delight. These characters don't have a breath of life in them from the first boring introduction. After all they are just senseless cattle being led to a finale stealing (not even borrowing) from the likes of Texas Chainsaw, Antichrist, Silence of the Lambs and Picnic at Hanging Rock, but in a 2 hour and 20 minute run time, you think there would be time to break from 2 dimensions....well you'd be wrong. The entire cast (lead aside for now) has an acting range from A to B with this rough draft of a script.
Remember Toni's devastating performance in Hereditary? The pain felt in words after that scream that you'll never stop hearing? Well Aster must have just thought the scream worked, because that's the most you get from Pugh for the first 45 minutes. Screaming. Her introduction couldn't have been more boring, (it's her having a Facebook style panic attack on her cell phone and laptop simultaneously in a one woman show that last 6 minutes) and there is no mercy or attachment to her or her loss we can give her by just seeing some fancy aftermath. She's introduced to us without life or charm and we're asked to feel terrible for her because of two grizzly images?
And this is the problem with the entire movie if that's what they're calling this. I am not opposed to the grotesque or gore. I'm opposed to using it when you have nothing else. This film rises its crescendos, reaches its breaking tension points and you feel like you might as well have been watching a brick wall crumble. There is no effect on the audience, no matter how artsy this geek show gets. When you get to these scenes that are supposed to take you over and arrest you...you feel...nothing. And to be asked to take this so deathly seriously, is almost offensive on how poorly this was done.
What a tragic waste. You can watch that trailer 1000 times and think, "how could anything with this plot and these images possibly fail?" Well, I invite you to find out. Shockingly poor.