LogFAQs > #965333141

5. Hereditary (153 points)

Why I Chose It: The debut film of Ari Aster, his strong sense of direction, creepy vibes, and absolutely monstrous performances from the entire cast made Hereditary a stand-out film not only of its year, but the whole decade and arguably the whole canon of horror. It still stands as studio A24's highest-grossing film at $80 million, the rare critical and commercial horror darling that stands out as the crown jewel of their collection.

BetrayedTangy: 1
Suprak: 1
jcgamer107: 2
Plasmabeam: 2
thesmark: 3
rockus: 4
Lightning Strikes: 7
Johnbobb: 10
PrinceKaro: 10
FFDragon: 11
fortybelowsummer: 11
Snake: 15
Inviso: 17
Tom Nook: 29
red13n: 30

BetrayedTangy - As I was first reading over this list, I already knew this was going to be taking the number 1 spot. This movie not only changed my perspective on horror, but on film as a whole. Hereditary is a visual masterpiece that Ive gotten to experience several times now and it just keeps getting better. First off, the story just blows my mind, I love how the initial family dynamic establishes this unnerving atmosphere before anything scary happens. Then little by little the horror starts seeping in, especially with Charlie. Little things like her drawings, the pigeon scene, the clicking; theyre all signs of the classic creepy kid trope. This is where we start to think we have a good idea where the movie is going then pop! Her fucking head flies off. From this point onward the movie doesnt hold back at all. Each character starts handling their grief differently. As a result, they all become distanced and separated allowing Ellen and Joanie to start getting into their heads one by one before Annie finally becomes possessed and begins murdering the entire family including herself. Its absolutely horrifying and I love it for that Despite the movie containing very little action, the atmosphere and tension is all this movie needs to remain an insane thrill ride from start to finish. Theres so much more here I could go on about, but if I did, I would never finish these write ups and this one would end up looking like a 5-paragraph essay, so Im just going to call it here and take a well-earned break from writing haha.

Suprak - I LOVED this movie. This might wind up being my shortest write up, because honestly there are only so many ways I can think to say this is great. You know that really old SNL skit where Chris Farley would go you remember that one timethat was awesome.? Thats going to be my entire write-up here, I feel like. I know individual tastes vary so I dont know what the general consensus for here is going to be, but I went already after ranking stuff to see what sort of scores these movies had on Rotten Tomatoes, and I was shocked to find this had an audience score in the mid 60s. This is exactly what I want from a horror film and there really wasnt too much here Id want to change. It is interesting and unique and scary and mysterious and not afraid to get brutal but not overly reliant on it.

Just to give you a frame of reference here, the literal first thing I did after finishing this movie was google did Toni Colette get nominated for Hereditary because I felt like maybe she was and I just didnt remember it. It turns out she wasnt, and holy shit what an oversight because she is amazing in this. Just completely incredible. The entire cast here is absolutely bonkers good, but she somehow stands head and shoulders above them. This was, to me, one of the best performances in all of horror, of all time, full stop. That isnt to take anything else away from any of the other actors, because I felt like the acting and the casting here were both fantastic. The dads sort of subtle struggle of keeping the family together or the son screaming mommy as shes bashing her head on the attic or even Charlie, who was just fantastic casting. This is probably going to sound more insulting than I mean it to, but she was so weird looking and offputting just from her appearance that I cannot imagine anyone else being able to play that role as effectively as she did. Just from the way she looks you know something is up. Overall this feels like a movie where they got every single casting decision right, and where every single actor brought something important to their role.

I hate using the phrase slow burn because I feel like that tends to be a nice way of saying the first part of this is boring so try to stick with it, but I feel like it actually applies here. Theres a point in the middle of this film where I actually forgot I was watching a horror movie. I dont even mean that in a bad way, because it wasnt as if I wasnt enjoying it a lot still. But after the weird daughter character dies, I feel like there is maybe a 30 minute gap where I almost completely forgot the horror to it and the movie doesnt suffer for it in any way. Like Toni Colettes melt down at the dinner table where she is straight up screaming at her son is just so incredibly visceral and painful and raw that it feels like the most brutal scene in the entire movie, and I should probably bring up the fact that she literally saws her head off with piano wire at the end. There is a real interesting examination here on motherhood and loss and so many of those scenes after Charlies death are jaw dropping. I mean, the misdirect itself is great. I had assume Charlie was some sort of evil creature (not knowing what exactly) so I was ready for her to start doing some real evil stuff. So when she is summarily killed off with a straight up decapitation, my jaw quite literally dropped and I dont mean that as a turn of phrase. And then that scene after where the son just drives home and slowly crawls into his bed? Or when Toni Colette is sobbing and screaming she wants to die? What an incredible sequences of scenes. It is brutal and horrific but at the same time somehow very real and the movie does an amazing job with the family dynamic here as it feeds into the larger narrative.