Hereditary 2018

     Annie Graham’s mother has passed away and Annie is having a difficult time with her grief.  She also has regrets about her relationship with her mother.  Annie lives with her husband Steve, their 16-year-old son Peter and their 13-year-old daughter Charlie.  Peter seems to be the person with the most sanity in the household?  Annie tries going to a support group for the bereaved but she doesn’t know if she belongs there?  She meets group member Joan and they become friends.      

     The scenery of this area in Utah is very beautiful but also slightly ominous and menacing?  It may be the perfect background for a film that is extremely dark, serious, intense, scary and creepy.  It includes ghosts, séances, death, burned bodies, severed heads, a car accident, maggots, flies, ants, blood, rage, screaming and panic.  The characters have fits, bang their head on hard surfaces, smoke pot, drinking as teens, weird apparitions and language.  I thought the scariest part is the music!!  My honest opinion is that I would like to have all the time back that I used to watch this movie?  There is a LOT that is ambiguous and there is a LOT of cruelty.  I didn’t get the ending either??  1 ½* (I really didn’t like this movie)  (Maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea??)

127 min, Drama directed by Ari Aster with Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Christy Summerhays, Morgan Lund, Mallory Bechtel, Jake Brown, Harrison Nell, BriAnn Rachele, Heidi Mendez. 

Note:  Imdb 7.3, 89% critic 62% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 4*, Amazon Video 3.3* with 869 reviews, Metacritic 87 out of 100 with 49 critics 7.4 out of 10 with 549 reviews, Rollingstone 3 ½* out of 4* Peter Travers, The Guardian Mark Kermode 3* out of 5*.

Special Note:  Filmed in Park City, Utah Film Studios, Sandy and Salt Lake City Utah.  Toni Collette told her agent that she didn’t want to do any more heavy and dark films.  She changed her mind when she read the Hereditary script.  The original cut of the film was over 3 hours but consisted mainly of more family dialog.  Gabriel and Alex had previously worked together.  Alex and Milly knew each other from school.  The interior of the Graham house was built on a sound stage.  Director Aster wrote biographies and back stories for all the characters before writing the screenplay for his directorial debut.  The film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and her Lover from 1989, influenced Aster.  Shooting lasted 32 days.  Gross was $44 million in the United States and Canada.  $35.3 million in other countries for a total gross of $79.3 million with a production budget of $10 million.