Movie Review: Hereditary

This week I decided to watch and review “Hereditary,” for three reasons. One, it was pouring out when it was time to go to the cinema (and thundering enough to shake the house), two, it’s directed by Ari Aster of “Beau is Afraid,” and three, Toni Collette stars. She seems to be in everything these days; she makes films like Stephen King writes horror. She usually plays ordinary woman, who are thwacked in the face with problems that would set most people on the road to a nervous breakdown, but she manages to cope somehow, someway. In “Barbie,” America Ferrara notes that it’s impossible to be a woman because you feel that not only are you doing everything wrong, everything is also your fault. In “Hereditary,” Toni feels similarly, and admits to it, so she’s easy to sympathize with. 

So the protagonist of “Hereditary,” is Toni Collette, who I have been a fan of since she and Rachel Griffiths dressed up as ABBA and lip-synched “Waterloo,” in “Muriel’s Wedding” to cheers at the resort they were vacationing at (Take that, over-tanned mean girls!). She is an artist and is married to Gabriel Byrne, a psychiatrist. Toni and Gabriel have two children: Peter (Alex Wolff), an uncommunicative pothead who is on the verge of applying for college, and thirteen-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who is quirky and artistic and starts behaving like Wednesday Addams following the death of her grandmother. “You know, you were her favorite,” Toni tells her at bedtime to which the deadpan reply is, “She wanted me to be a boy.” Hold that thought, please, it’s going to come back to haunt everyone. In truly horrifying ways, trust me. Poor Toni’s life, in this movie, is not going to be as half as good as an ABBA song, either. After her estranged mother dies, Toni delivers a weird eulogy, and then Really Bad Things start to happen. First, her daughter suffers a food allergy at a party and dies in a gruesome way for which Toni cannot help but blame Alex (who was also there). The family deals with grief about as well as the Jarretts in “Ordinary People,” (only the Jarretts paid their electricity bills), which is to say, poorly. In a support group meeting (kept secret), Toni meets a woman (Ann Dowd), whose son and grandson also died, and who eventually persuades her to attend a seance. Toni is skeptical, but as it turns out, Ann may be on to something.

After Toni persuades her family to do a seance with her in their home, the eeriness ramps up, and Alec starts behaving oddly, too. Is he possessed? Well, Toni digs through her old photo albums and has some creepy sleepwalking episodes, and then opens the trap door to the attic and discovers – well, I won’t spoil it, but since I saw “Beau is Afraid,” with a similar symbol, I’d have to say maybe she’s visiting her subconscious. Gabriel, too, is sucked into the wacky happenings like he’s in a whirlpool, and Ann turns out to be perhaps more than she seems, and then, well, this is Ari Aster, so you’re going to end on a “What the hell?” note. Have fun. Pull down that door to your subconscious and finally face your Waterloo.