New haunts

Writer-director Ari Aster’s feature debut is more than impressive. Hereditary is a horror movie that will bruise your brain, make your blood run cold and stay in your system well after you’ve left the theater.

Annie (an incredible Toni Collette) has just lost her controlling, creepy mother. She has some control issues of her own, which manifest in her creation of miniature models, often depicting scenes from her home life with husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne, doing his best work in years), son Peter (an impressive Alex Wolff) and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro, who will break your heart). While every member of the family seems to be earnest and decent, they are also dysfunctional with a capital “D.”

Her mom’s death, pressure from an upcoming show for her miniatures and the demands of parenthood have Annie on edge, to the point where she seeks counseling. At a support group for people mourning the recent loss of loved ones, Annie meets Joan (the remarkable Ann Dowd), a cheery woman who, nonetheless, has recently lost her son.

Joan ends up teaching Annie how to do a séance and communicate with the recently departed, and it all seems innocent enough until apparitions start appearing and malevolent spirits begin messing things up for Peter, who responds by hitting the bong hard.

The movie is a ghost, demon and witch story rolled into one, with elements of The Witch, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and even The Sixth Sense (that vibe owes a lot to the presence of Collette). It’s also one of the more powerful depictions in recent years of a family falling apart, making for a deep and layered horror excursion.

The creeping dread factor starts early in Hereditary and never lets up. Aster proves to be a master of atmospheric scares, relying less on jolts and gore and more on lingering shots in dark corners where you can sort of make out something staring at you. Everything works up to a frightening puzzler of a finale that might have you initially asking, “WTF?” but eventually thinking, “Oh, that’s some messed up shit right there.”

Collette tears your face off as Annie, a seemingly decent person who reveals a lot of mommy issues (regarding her own mom and her new role as a matriarch). Annie isn’t an openly bad person, but as the demons start to manifest and her mother’s past boils to the surface, she becomes a seriously, epically bad mom. Collette mixes a quiet, withdrawn demeanor with moments of visceral, outward nastiness that make Annie unreliable at best. She makes every step of this tormented mom’s unfortunate journey mesmerizing.

Wolff gives an incredibly raw, emotionally jarring performance as the son who doubts his mom and craves stability. The destruction of his home life coincides with his transition to manhood, and Wolff has moments in this movie when he seems so realistically disturbed that you might mistake Hereditary for a documentary.

Aster gives the horror genre an instant classic. It has some images that will haunt your dreams, for sure. It also has a sort of enveloping darkness that will leave you perhaps a bit unsettled and on edge.

It’s as unpleasant as they come, and, as a horror movie fan, I say “amen” to that.