In the suffocating spaces between grief and madness, Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) writhes like a nightmare taking form. This isn’t just another horror film – it’s a raw-nerved excavation of family trauma that burrows deep beneath your skin and nests there, pulsing with quiet dread. After multiple viewings, I’m convinced it stands as the most emotionally devastating horror film of the past decade, a work that transforms personal pain into universal terror with surgical precision.
The Graham family’s world begins to unravel at the funeral of Ellen Leigh, the secretive matriarch whose death sets in motion a cascade of horrors. Annie Graham (Toni Collette) stands at the podium delivering a eulogy that feels more like an exorcism – trying to make peace with a mother who cast long shadows across her life. In her workshop, Annie crafts miniature dioramas of her life with obsessive precision, each tiny room a perfect replica hiding imperfect truths. These miniatures serve as more than set dressing – they’re a brilliant metaphor for the film itself, where every frame feels like a carefully constructed dollhouse scene waiting to be shattered.
Collette’s performance as Annie is a masterclass in controlled chaos, deserving of accolades far beyond the genre constraints that often limit horror films in award seasons. She carries the weight of generational trauma in every gesture, her face a landscape where grief and terror wage constant war. When tragedy strikes the family – in a scene so shocking it redefines what horror can accomplish – Collette unleashes a primal scream of loss that will haunt viewers long after the credits roll. The dinner scene where she explosively confronts Peter about his role in Charlie’s death is particularly devastating, raw emotions erupting through the thin veneer of family civility. What makes this scene especially powerful is how it mirrors countless familiar family arguments while pushing into territory that feels almost supernaturally charged.
The film’s visual grammar speaks in whispers and screams. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski’s camera moves through the Graham house like a patient ghost, lingering in corners where shadows gather like conspirators. The framing often traps characters in doorways and windows, suggesting the invisible bars of their genetic prison. When night falls, darkness becomes a living thing, pressing against the windows like an unwelcome visitor seeking invitation. The way Pogorzelski captures the treehouse – that innocent childhood refuge turned sinister sanctuary – is particularly masterful, transforming it from a place of imagination into a tower of terror. There’s a moment where the camera slowly pushes in on the treehouse at night that fills me with more dread than any jump scare could achieve.
What elevates “Hereditary” above standard horror fare is its commitment to character psychology. Each family member’s descent into paranoia and fear feels earned, their reactions grounded in real human responses to trauma. Alex Wolff’s Peter, the teenage son carrying an impossible burden of guilt, delivers a performance of such vulnerable intensity that watching him unravel feels almost voyeuristic. The scene of him lying in bed, paralyzed with fear as an unseen presence terrorizes him, captures adolescent helplessness with horrifying precision. What’s remarkable is how Wolff conveys both teenage apathy and deep emotional wounds, sometimes in the same moment. Gabriel Byrne as Steve, the father trying desperately to maintain normalcy while his family implodes, provides a tragic anchor of rationality in an increasingly irrational world. His skepticism serves as our own, until even that foundation crumbles.
The film’s handling of Charlie, played with unsettling otherworldliness by Milly Shapiro, deserves special mention. Her presence haunts the film long after her shocking departure, her distinctive clicking sound becoming a motif that sends shivers down the spine. The bird incident at her school serves as an early warning of the horror to come, a small act of violence that presages greater terrors. What’s particularly brilliant about Charlie’s character is how she embodies both innocence and otherworldly menace – a combination that makes her fate all the more tragic and her continued presence in the story all the more unsettling.
Aster orchestrates the horror with the precision of a classical composer, each scene building upon the last with meticulous attention to emotional resonance. Each seemingly mundane moment – a family dinner, a drive home, a grief support group meeting – thrums with undercurrents of dread. The director understands that true horror lives in the spaces between events, in the silent moments when characters (and audiences) are left alone with their thoughts. When violence erupts, it arrives with the shocking suddenness of a branch snapping under too much weight.
The film’s exploration of hereditary trauma becomes literal as the story unfolds, revealing a dark legacy that has been carefully cultivated across generations. Annie’s discovery of her mother’s involvement in the occult feels less like a genre twist and more like the revelation of a terrible family secret that was hiding in plain sight. The Graham family’s suffering isn’t random – it’s an inheritance more binding than DNA. Annie’s miniature artworks take on new meaning as we realize the family themselves are but pieces being moved by unseen hands, trapped in a grand design beyond their comprehension.
Joan, played with disquieting warmth by Ann Dowd, emerges as a crucial figure in the family’s downfall. Her seemingly benevolent presence masks a sinister agenda, her grief support group meetings serving as a gateway to darker rituals. The séance scenes she orchestrates are masterpieces of tension, building from quiet uncertainty to supernatural terror with inexorable momentum. Dowd’s performance is particularly noteworthy for how it subverts our expectations of the “helpful stranger” trope in horror films, making her eventual reveal all the more devastating.
Colin Stetson’s score deserves special mention, abandoning traditional horror music cues in favor of discordant drones and groaning strings that feel less composed than conjured. The sound design works in concert with the score to create an atmosphere of mounting unease – even mundane sounds like the clicking of a tongue become loaded with menace. During the film’s more intense sequences, the music swells to nearly unbearable levels, mirroring the psychological pressure cooker the characters find themselves trapped within. One particular sequence, where the score builds to a crescendo during Annie’s discovery in the attic, remains one of the most effective marriages of music and horror I’ve experienced in recent cinema.
As the film spirals toward its feverish conclusion, Aster pulls off a remarkable feat – making the supernatural elements feel like a natural extension of the family’s psychological dissolution. The occult aspects of the story emerge organically from the groundwork of family dynamics and mental illness, until it becomes impossible to separate the real from the unreal. The reveal of Ellen’s headless corpse in the attic feels less like a horror movie shock than the unearthing of a family’s buried secrets. The final sequence in the treehouse, bathed in otherworldly light, feels less like a genre payoff and more like the inevitable culmination of a Greek tragedy.
What makes “Hereditary” particularly effective is its understanding that the most potent horror comes not from what we see, but from what we think we might have seen in the corners of dark rooms. It’s a film that trusts its audience to lean into discomfort, to sit with uncertainty, to question their own perceptions. The horrors it presents – both supernatural and psychological – work because they’re grounded in recognizable family dynamics and real human fear.
The film’s lasting power lies in its ability to make the metaphorical literal – family trauma becomes a tangible force, grief manifests as a physical presence, and the weight of inheritance becomes a crushing destiny. The way it handles mental illness is particularly noteworthy, never reducing it to simple horror movie hysteria but treating it with the complexity it deserves. Annie’s revelation about her sleepwalking episode with the paint thinner becomes all the more horrifying when we realize it might not have been sleepwalking at all.
In an era where horror often relies on jump scares and surface-level frights, “Hereditary” stands as a testament to the genre’s potential for profound psychological exploration. It’s a film that understands horror’s unique ability to process human suffering through the lens of the fantastic, creating something that feels both ancient and urgently contemporary.
This is not a film that you simply watch and forget. Like the best of the genre, it burrows into your psyche, leaving you to question your own family history, your own inherited traits, your own potential for darkness. In the end, “Hereditary” suggests that the most terrifying truth might be that we are never truly free from the past – that somewhere in our genes, in our blood, in our bones, the sins and secrets of our ancestors are always waiting to emerge.
Aster’s debut feature announces itself not just as a superior horror film, but as a landmark piece of American cinema that will influence generations of filmmakers to come. It’s a symphony of dread that builds to a crescendo of terror, leaving audiences both shattered and transformed by its dark revelations. In the pantheon of modern horror, “Hereditary” stands as a towering achievement – a film that reminds us that sometimes the most terrifying monsters are the ones we inherit.