[8.6/10] I tend to think of the highest and best form of reviewing films as doing some kind of analysis, not just simply letting the reader know whether it’s good or bad. I still think it’s worthwhile to give a rating, and to talk about what worked and what didn’t in a particular movie, but I think the better side of reviewing is talking about what a film means, how its various elements combine to create theme and meaning and emotional investment. I’d rather engage with the ideas, merits, and flaws of a given film on their own terms than just classify each constituent part of it as positive or negative.

But there is one undeniably useful aspect of the “consumer reports” side of movie reviewing, and that is to warn you -- *Hereditary* will disturb you. Yes, there are scares, but few more frightening than any other top tier horror film. It’s not so much that the film is scary; more that it is gutting, It fits in the category of films like *Requiem For A Dream*, where you will walk away from the movie suitably impressed by what you’ve just witnessed, but also feel thoroughly awful about it.

That’s my only caution and hesitation in recommending it. *Hereditary* features two key performances that are out of this world and eminently award-worthy. It marries text and theme, a supernatural horror story and a harrowing family story, with complete virtuosity. And though it starts a bit slow, once the film kicks into gear, it grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go until the credits roll, if then. But therein lies the problem, because the film doesn't shy away from the abject horror of both the black magic that threatens to doom and damn the family at its center or the all-too-real, omni-destructive impact of mental illness that underpins the metaphor, and it is utterly devastating to watch.

The movie works in both modes. If you want to take it literally, the film expertly slow burns its supernatural horror. It parcels out apparitions in the distance, little bits of unease. It graduates to full on otherworldly happenings that unnerve but seem tame enough, with just enough wrong to be disconcerting. And by the end of the film, the revelation of satanic cults and possession and unexplainable happenings builds to a terrible crescendo, where you’re frightened for the characters, freaked out by the creatures lurking at the edge of the frame, and have a pit in your stomach from the havoc wreaked on this family by the dead hand of plots and schemes from long in the past.

But that’s also what makes *Hereditary* so harrowing, when you read it, either purely as metaphor or just with a baked in theme, of the struggle to deal with mental illness, passed down from generation to generation, causing, reinforced, and activated by trauma in a dispiriting vicious cycle. As much as the film soars with its black magic elements and voodoo tricks, the most disturbing parts of the movie stem from its center of a family in crisis, [spoiler]over a woman losing her mother and her daughter in quick succession[/spoiler], over a son who fears his mother wants to kill him, over sicknesses of the mind that manifest in brutal and horrifying ways.

The impact of those events is driven home by the incredible performances at the heart of the film. Toni Collette gives the performance of a lifetime, communicating Annie’s unfathomable grief, her sheer desperation, and her trauma-fueled discombobulation that leaves her raw, rambling and dangerous. Collette knows when to go big, huge even, but also when to reduce those emotions to the cauldron rumbling beneath, to the not-quite-right moments that can either play as the tentacles of a devil-worshipping cult wrapping around her through or as the throws of schizophrenia rolling in.

And Alex Wolff matches her note for note. While Peter, Annie’s son, doesn't undergo the exact same devolution his mother does, *Hereditary* is a movie that finds its strength in reactions. No character delivers more of those reactions, from dead-eyed guilt and shock at [spoiler]his sister’s accidental death[/spoiler], to bare, unmooring pain at his mother’s confessions and recriminations, to his own, separate unraveling transformation under the weight of those original lingering traumas and the new ones unwittingly inflicted anew by his mother in her own state of distress, than Peter does.

The results are utterly disquieting. As much as the supernatural is always lurking at the edges of the frame in *Hereditary*, for much of its runtime it’s a fairly straight, if artsy, kitchen sink drama. The twin spectres of loss and schizophrenia loom large in a family that clearly feels alienated from one another. Even before the film pulls the trigger on the straight up mystical happenings that may or may not be taking place, the scenes of Annie [spoiler]grieving her daughter[/spoiler], of Peter and his mother confronting one another over the dinner table, of imagined sleep-walked confessions, are hard to watch in their rawness entirely independently of any ghouls or goblins.

That’s heightened by the cinematography of the film, which both adds to the eerie atmosphere it maintains throughout, and highlights the incredible acting taking place. *Hereditary* is superb at keeping certain images at a distance from the viewer, small or blurry in the frame, as though you’re trying to make out some small detail in one of Annie’s diorama. It not only works in terms of horror, evoking the sense of some ghostly presence just beyond reach, but it dovetails with the movie’s mental illness metaphor, creating a visual representation of mental pathology peeking in before it takes over.

At the same time, director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski isn’t shy about emphasizing the intimacy of certain moments. There are numerous close-ups of Annie and Peter’s faces, letting the performers subtle reactions and changes in affect communicate the emotional and physical transitions taking place within them.

Those transitions are just too much to bear at times. *Hereditary* is a truly haunting film, one whose paranormal and painfully real horrors will stick with you long after the final frame. That is a blessing and a curse -- a testament to the tragic, unrelenting power of the film, but also a heavy weight to saddle the audience with as it leaves the theater. The movie is well-worth your time and attention, but may be more than you can handle in the moment, or shake after it’s finished.