Rosemary’s Grandbaby

This was a very good modern horror, way above the standard dreck we get now.

It mainly drew from Rosemary’s Baby but tried to blend it with the visceral nastiness and family breakdown trauma of The Exorcist. The result is a commendable effort but by blending those two films it dilutes itself from both ends.

For instance, the strongest aspect of Hereditary was the Joan character - she seems so supportive and understanding of Annie’s grief yet a little too keen on the seance… then you find out she is pure evil, throwing a family into a meat grinder for her Satanic cultish desires. Reflecting on how sweet she seemed initially is deeply disturbing, as is remembering the creepy smiles and apparent friendliness of other characters we later learn were cult members. RB made this the main focus - the human evil, but here it gets swept aside in favour of more scary demonic stuff.

The demonic stuff was well handled, but doesn’t reach the gut-wrenching depths of The Exorcist, where a young girl jams a crucifix into her bloodied genitals and shoves her mother’s face into the mess. If RB and Ex are potent single malts, Hereditary is a weak blend, but still does the job.

Also, the backstory was rather convoluted, with a grandmother failing to raise the demon within her own children, it partially inhabiting the granddaughter, but ultimately was aiming for the grandson. It’s like the film was trying to hide its obvious debt to RB that it ended up almost entirely shrouding a circuitous backstory except for blink and you’ll miss them clues - as if the filmmaker knew some autistic on YouTube would handle the explanation for you later on.

RB felt much more streamlined, whereas this darted around from (brilliantly acted) family drama, to demonic scares, to sleepwalking, to the cult, to doll-house imagery (I guess the symbolism was to show how this family is being puppeteered all along like a child playing with dolls but it’s quite on-the-nose to have that as Annie’s literal job).

I liked not knowing where it was all going, but when it got there it felt less than the sum of its parts, like the non-cult stuff was just red herrings rather than essential connective tissue to a final reveal in which everything makes sense (as in Identity).

Hereditary is a gruelling watch, you’re basically witnessing a family slowly being tortured and killed for two hours, and there doesn’t seem to be any possibility of escape, since they are puppeteered every step of the way. The genius of RB was that she took the final step, the cult knew her maternal instincts would prevail, there was a terrifying psychological and emotional truth to its core. Hereditary is like watching a sack of kittens drown.

All that said, the film was expertly directed and Ari Aster is one-to-watch for sure. Most horrors today are lazy boo-scares, this was all about performances, subtlety and atmosphere. I look forward to his next projects.