Hereditary (Film Review)

2018 A24
Written and Directed by: Ari Aster
Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne;

MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 127 Minutes
Nicsperiment Score (2018): 9/10

Nicsperiment Score (2025 Rewatch): 6/10

I greatly enjoyed 2015's The Witch, but as I walked out of the theater, I heard a group of departing teenagers say, "See, I told you not to trust Rotten Tomatoes." I did not love 2017's It Comes at Night, and felt it was falsely marketed, but the guy next to me in theater's response was a little more extreme. "I'm going to ask for my money back," he said. I've sung The Last Jedi's praises unendingly. When my cousin walked out of the theater with me after first viewing, he said, "I knew I should have trusted the audience score over the critics score." He absolutely hated it (EDITOR'S NOTE FROM JUST A FEW YEARS LATER: After a couple more viewings, so do I).
Upon their release, all three of these movies scored over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, a website which aggregates critical reviews. The percentage is that of reporting critics who liked the film. Rotten Tomatoes also allows regular folks to vote on the quality of a film. The average audience score for these three films? Fourty-nine. Yes, 49% of non-critics who watched these films had a positive reaction to them. The other 51% thought they stunk.
What's going on? Are today's critics that out-of-touch with the common man? Will they, after viewing so many similar movies, give a positive review to any movie that is out of the ordinary?
Hereditary, a horror film starring Toni Collette as a woman mourning her recently deceased mother, is certainly out of the ordinary. It currently sits at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, but with only a 57% in the audience score. Is this another case of critics jumping all over a turd, just because it's dressed in fine new clothing?
While Hereditary explores grief and trauma like 2014's The Babadook, it is indeed something completely new. Collette's character designs intricate miniatures for a living, and first-time director, Ari Aster, uses that aesthetic to establish a unique visual design for the film, alternating between long shots, and close-ups that swing around to reveal more of the room...and some things the audience might not want to see.
Collette's family is being torn apart by her struggle to deal with her mother-inflicted trauma, and her ineffectual husband, played by Gabriel Byrne (Irish brogue often blooming through the cracks of his put-on American accent), only seems able to fan the flames. Their two children cope in different ways, but it seems that even greater tragedies are waiting to befall them.
This is a film that is easily spoiled by any deeper description of its plot, especially as Aster takes the film, particularly in its latter moments, into some extremely unexpected places. The film is full of chilly haunted house scares, true to the way it was advertised, but no trailer or commercial even hints at what else is in store. Clearly, by my audience's reaction, it is these latter elements that are dividing the public. However, to give nothing away, those elements are the perfect, most logical payoff for the subjects of trauma and grief Aster wants to explore, and the film is loaded with foreshadowing as to its intended conclusions. The viewer may not like what happens, but as unpredictable and off-the-rails as Hereditary seems, it couldn't have gone any other way.
This is the uniting factor in all the films I've mentioned: they don't give the audience what they want--they instead give themselves what they actually need. I'm sure your average audience member would love for Collette to have a serial-killer nemesis to stab away, or a clear ghost to exorcise. Life doesn't always work that way. Thankfully, not every film does, either.

2025 Rewatch:

I've been terrified to revisit this on the fear that it won't hold up and...it doesn't.

The visuals are still incredible. The score, the general aesthetic, editing, general filmmaking, all great. However, the plotting and character work falls apart on rewatch. The cult's plan revolves around such an insane amount of contrivances, coincidences, and stupidity. For instance, one of the cult members befriends Toni Collette's character halfway through the film, and most of the awful stuff that happens in the last act comes from the manipulation through that friendship. But this woman was close friends with Collette's mother, and the two partook in rituals together that were photographed. In fact, Collette discovers these pictures late in the film and is shocked...though the pictures have been there the entire movie. It's only through the happenstance of Collette picking up and leafing through several books in her mother's collection and NOT THAT ONE that she doesn't see the pictures of the woman before they meet. The cult is shown to be meticulous. They've even been shown to break into Collette's house. They know Collette's mother took these pictures. Why not take the book when they break in? Instead, Collette only doesn't notice the pictures earlier because the script doesn't want her to yet. Also, the cult members stash Collette's mother up in the attic. She's likely rotting up there for months. I had a dead mouse in my wall this week and I was ready to move out after three hours.

Also, it appears that the cult explicitly designed Collette's daughter's beheading, a death that stockpiles dozens of goofball coincidences to happen. The scene where the daughter with the frequently mentioned nut allergy is poisoned by the nuts at the party is laugh out loud stupid. Girls at party bake a cake with giant nuts, and then the daughter eats the cake slice, with the enormous nuts sticking out without a thought, then is confused when she starts choking. Could Aster have at least had the girls blend the nuts into the batter or something? This looks like the slice of cake the coyote from Looney Tunes would try to give the roadrunner if he found out that birds have nut allergies.

And finally, the performances. Collette is an incredible actress. In the other horror film for which she received accolades, The Sixth Sense, she feels like she is playing an actual person. On rewatch, her part in Hereditary is just a collection of tics and histrionics. I couldn't connect with her or anyone else in the film. I couldn't connect with the film.

Hereditary still looks great, though, and the mood is incredible. The last 15 minutes are nuts, even if they don't make much sense. The miniatures aesthetic and gore are incredibly well done. I love Colin Stetson's sax-centric score. I still think this movie is worth watching for those factors. Unfortunately, though, like with many films I enjoyed in the theater in the late 2010's, recent rewatches have simply not been kind. The storytelling is flawed and fractured. Judging from all the five star reviews at Letterboxd, I guess few people care.