Talk:Hereditary/@comment-5061515-20190405161757

I absolutely love Hereditary! As a lifelong horror film enthusiast and a writer of the genre myself, I found this brilliant horror film to be one of the best of recent memory, featuring a masterful Toni Collette performance as she embodied the struggle of being a mother faced with watching her already-fragile family completely break to pieces as the result of her own mother's secrecy. Filled with foreboding atmosphere, a quiet, slow-building introduction to our tragic family characters, unique set design and a deliciously subversive take on the haunted house family-in-peril format, Hereditary finds Ari Aster joining the ranks of other freshman filmmakers kicking off their careers with an absolutely mesmerizing -- not to mention traumatizing -- contribution to the genre that has shaped my life. Although his debut definitely shared some obvious DNA with other genre classics like Rosemary's Baby (i.e. the cult horror at work, the necklaces they wore, the plot to summon a demon) and Don't Look Now (i.e. a young family member dying and her mother participating in a seance to make contact), Hereditary manages to sprinkle those familiar ingredients over a devastatingly original story about grief and the horrifying things that can happen when not dealt with through communication and warmth.

The ending, where Peter is chased by his possessed mother up to the attic where he watches her saw her head off, is utterly terrifying, pure nightmare fuel. And the way "she" looks down at him while she's self-decaptitating as if to reflect how angered she was by him for allowing Charlie to die, far from a happy Conjuring-style ending. As Peter, now possessed by Paimon, stands before a crowd of mostly naked coven members as they chant his name in reverence, similar to the cult chanting "Hail, Satan" in Rosemary's Baby when she finds out her baby is Satan's spawn, is dark and disturbing in its own right.