Ari Aster’s modern horror breakthrough,Hereditary, will land on your favorite streaming platform very soon.According to What’s on Netflix, the film will be added toNetflix’s library in January, a month that notoriously offers very little in the way of quality horror content.
Starting January 1, you may streamAster’s original takeon the demonic/possession subgenres starring Toni Collette. Back in 2018,Hereditarywas the most common topic of the “horror doesn’t win awards” discourse, and Collette’s riveting performance was the shining example to point to. Compared to the notable genre titles that were nominated and/or won in major award ceremonies,Hereditarytruly stands beside them.
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Collette gives life to Annie Graham, a mother and wife whose own mother has recently passed away. Annie mourns, but she isn’t exactly grief-stricken. The problem is that one of her children, Charlie, also dies under awful circumstances, and Annie is sent down a hole of depression as she’s unable to cope.
Annie is contacted by a lady who tells her she can communicate with Charlie. While attempting to contact her daughter in the afterlife, she ends up opening a gateway for something much worse,something her family had always been part of. Just as you start to cure yourself of the hangover of the holidays and feast on yummy leftovers,Hereditarybecomes available once again to prove its legacy.
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Aster’s film is thought-provoking. It’s a profound experience about grief and the fragility of the soul in the face of tragedy. It is an eye-opening movie about the unique shades of motherhood when a mother loses her own, and she’s still supposed to care for her children. But it is also a terrifying film with brutal violence.
Hereditarywas released to critical acclaim (it still has a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes), and most claimed it was one of thebest horror movies of the 2010s. Snobbish viewers and critics were surprised by the artsy premise and execution:Hereditarymeant they could suddenly love a horror film and not risk their “authenticity” by liking a movie they weren’t supposed to like. Horror has generally been a genre that high-nosed viewers are not supposed to respect, and A24 kept proving otherwise:The Witchhad been a strong point in 2015, butHereditarybent the rules even further.
Some called it “elevated horror” because they couldn’t understand how such an artistic feat could be categorized in the same genre asSleepaway CamporThe Evil Dead. But, as it turns out,Hereditaryis a pretty basic horror film that complies with the usual rules, including a good amount of gore.
It’s a movie about possession executed by a guy who’s able to combine high-end art with scenes of a possessed woman crawling up the walls. It was just a matter of using the best of both worlds to make a compelling horror film. It’s not campy, but it sure features many classic genre tropes.
Hereditary
