Hereditary (2018)
When I first saw Ari Aster’s feature-length directorial debut, I thought about it for days. Hereditary is the violent, demonic endgame of what happens when no one ever sorts out their generational trauma. The Graham family are picked off one by one by a chain of events set in motion by their grandmother who was long gone by the opening of the film. Hereditary is known for the grotesque, no-punches-pulled violence to which it subjects its family of four, but the worst of its violence are the acts of psychological torture they deal to one another. Whether it’s a son’s carelessness, a mother’s resentment, or a father’s inaction, the underlying horror of Hereditary isn’t in watching a family be torn apart by outside forces, it’s seeing it be desecrated from the inside with only the slightest push. — Kenneth Shepard
