Connect with us

News

[SXSW Review] ‘Hereditary’ is Perfect, Dangerous, Anxiety-Inducing Filmmaking

Published

on

Hereditary

From the very second Hereditary begins, you know that you’re in for something different. A slow zoom into a lifelike dollhouse that shifts into an actual house is acutely aware of itself, you are being pulled in to something unsafe. It’s a visual riptide that is about to pull you out to a very unsympathetic, dark sea.

The story follows the Graham family, who is dealing with the recent loss of the family’s matriarch. Not long after the funeral, the family begins to find that the roots of their ancestry may have some terrifying ties.

Hereditary is a strategic assault on its audience. The Graham family’s home is a heightened reality dollhouse, it constantly feels off kilter with certain furnishings with skewed heights or dimensions creating a small piece of the uncomfortable other worldliness that is already working on your viewing psyche. The sound design is a constant binaural pulse that is played almost throughout the first act of the film. Those two elements together are already subliminally accosting you, before the horror elements have even been introduced.

What really blows my mind is that this is director, Ari Aster’s first feature. This dude must have lived many lives as a director previously cause, he is resolute in his filmmaking. Hereditary is dangerous anxiety inducing filmmaking, Aster creates a new, raw and terrifying path for the horror genre.

The film could exist entirely as a family drama and it would have been absorbing. Aster takes care to make the drama elements work, while gradually introducing the creeping dread. A lot like placing a frog in a pot with the temperature slowly rising, you are already being cooked in a substantial amount of resonating horrific imagery and ideas.

I’m a fan of a lot of A24 horror. Atmospheric genre films like The Witch are my specific cup of tea. Hereditary takes the atmospheric elements and adds gravity to them by delivering on the spectrum of what horror audiences love (yes, even some extremely effective jump scares) creating a film that feels like it could bridge the gap of atmospheric slow burn fans and more mainstream horror audiences.

The imagery cut in in the film seriously gets stuck in your head. I’m still thinking about it now. There is a lot of narrative plays that are really smart about crafting the experience to leave you with not only some seriously fucked up imagery but material you may want to go home and research.

The cast in is pure greatness. Toni Collette and each member of her family take you by the hand down familiar, familial paths before leaving you lost alone and without a compass in the dark family narrative. Collette’s grief and character big reveals work terrifyingly organic and grounded.

Hereditary is dangerous anxiety inducing filmmaking, Aster creates a new, raw and terrifying path for the horror genre.”

Hereditary is seriously an achievement for horror in every way. It does some unflinching things with the process of grief and family dynamics and then inverts them in an almost perverse way. It’s a mean-spirited movie, its goal is to fuck you up and it entirely worked on me. From where I’m sitting, there is no way that this film doesn’t end up on my top 5 list at the end of the year. This film is dangerous and I can’t wait to experience it again.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

on

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

on

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

on

Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading