Hereditary Review

Parents have a lot to answer for.

It’s bad enough that they willingly choose to make life on our overpopulated planet harder for everyone else by creating even more people, just so they can love and feel loved.

And don’t get me started on all those tory voting fucks out there who’ve sold out their own children’s future just so the value of their house soars, as well as the number of homeless people in this country.

But now it seems like our inheritance also includes creepy as fuck grandmothers who perform demonic rituals on their children’s children too.

At least that seems to be your lot in life if you’re in Hereditary.

Annie’s mother has just died, but seeing as she was very old – and as we’ve already covered, creepy as fuck – no-one seems too cut up about this.

No-one except Annie’s teenage daughter Charlie who – even by Hollywood’s horror standards – is a bit of an odd child. 

Annie always had a strained relationship with her mother – and it wasn’t just because she was bat-shit crazy… although that was probably the root cause of it.

So, when her mother took an overly maternal interest in Charlie, Annie allowed her to take a hands on approach to being a grandmother, if only to ease her guilt about some supposed failings as a daughter.

It’s fair to say that neither of these women are going to be in the running for mother of the year.

But after her grandmother’s death, all sorts of strange things start happening to our now even stranger Charlie.

Not being the kind of girl who fits in at school – or anywhere else for that – Annie demands that Charlie’s older brother Peter takes his twisted sister to a party he’s off to at a friend’s house. 

And that’s when things start to get really weird.

Thanks to films like Get Out, It and A Quiet Place, the once staid and predictable horror genre is so hot right now – and Hereditary has been ordained as 2018’s ‘blue steel’ of scary movies.

So it was no surprise that the Sundance London screening of this was packed out with various reviewers, bloggers and freeloaders.

I wouldn’t believe the hype though.

It’s not that Hereditary is bad, far from it – Toni Colette is brilliant as Annie, and her eyes have never looked weirder. 

Which is meant to be a compliment, though I wouldn’t try it out on a Saturday night.

The problem is Hereditary just isn’t particularly original, a familiar sticking point for a lot of horror films, so I didn’t buy into the fear that the usual cinematic tricks are designed to illicit. 

From the bird kamikazing themselves into a window for no good reason, ghostly shapes in the dark that go bump in the night and – of course – people doing things no normal person ever would unless they’re in a horror film.

Which makes me wonder where all of the ‘this generation’s exorcist’ soundbites came from?

I guess these days, the fear is planted even before you start watching a horror film.

Hereditary is well acted and executed, but jumps a Jaws shaped shark with its preposterous conclusion that actually makes all that scary stuff you’ve just sat through feel more a lot less frightening.

And I’m not sure about the virtues of using an unusual looking child actor to play the creepiest character in the film – in fact, i’m entirely sure it’s pretty fucked up.

If you want some real horror stories, all you need to do is pick up a tory tax-dodging owned newspaper and read the bullshit propaganda they spew out 24/7.

And then take a look at the world these sick tories and republicans are creating for us.

I mean, if parents can’t even be bothered to think of their own children – then who the fuck will?

Jonathan Campbell

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June 2018
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