I ignored this when it first popped up on cinemas but it received enough critical praise to get my attention. Even my cinephile friend commented that it’s ‘pretty scary’. It’s the debut feature of its director Ari Aster with performers that are mostly not that well known. There is one exception in the form of a supporting character and unfortunately her first appearance is about when the film takes a turn for the worse.

A family of four grieves the death of the grandmother with the mother Annie being especially stricken with guilt due to their poor relationship. The son Peter seems normal enough but the 13-year old daughter Charlie seems to have some developmental problems and was especially close to the grandmother. Annie secretly joins a support group to help deal with her guilt, revealing more strange facts from her life such as the fact that her own brother committed suicide as a teenager. Meanwhile various family members appear to see an apparition of the deceased grandmother. One night Annie forces Peter to take Charlie along to a party. Predictably he neglects her and Charlie happens to eat some chocolate containing nuts to which she is allergic. When she starts having difficulty breathing, Peter rushes her to the hospital in his car and they get involved in an accident.

This film is unusually long for a horror film and it makes good use of the extended screen time to introduce the members of the family and set the mood. As the characters sit around the dinner table, you get a sense of the director giving time and space for the family drama to expand to fill the scene and raise the tension. The first half of the film is especially well executed as any sign of the supernatural is restrained and could just as easily be dismissed as mental ailments that can be attributed to anxiety and stress. Even as events move along the usual patterns of horror films, Hereditary is just different enough in all sorts of small ways to throw you for a loop and make you wonder where it is heading next.

Having Ann Dowd as a friendly face to offer emotional support however is the beginning of a long series missteps because who would trust Aunt Lydia suddenly showing up out of nowhere to offer help. Soon after that, the film coalesces into a more definite form that marks it out as pretty much a reprise of Rosemary’s Baby while being inferior to it in every way. Apart from the visual horror of sawing off heads, the film reverts to a more traditional format that has few means of distinguishing itself. It’s especially disappointing that all of inner turmoil and psychological conflict that has been so carefully built up in Annie’s character is suddenly thrown away because once she gets possessed, none of that matters any longer.

I had high hopes for this film and initial impressions appeared to justify the critical praise. However once past the initial setup stage, Hereditary ends up being such a formulaic horror film that it’s not really worth watching at all.