Late to the Party: Hereditary

Annie has always had a strained relationship with her mother but when her daughter was born, Annie decided to let her mother in. Toward the end of her life Annie had her mother move in to take care of her. She didn't realize what was really happening until it's too late.

I'm not really sure I want to go to into the plot of this film because I feel like it would give too much away. If you want to know more of the plot then I suggest just watching it. Knowing too much could make some of the spooky stuff less effective. That being said let's just jump into the review. But be warned there will be some spoilers!

I am torn on this movie. I like this movie, don't get me wrong, but there are too many "why" questions and not enough resolve. I think the movie makes the assumption that you already know something that you really don't know.

Toni Collette, who plays Annie, was fantastic in this film. She plans the sad, depressed mother well but the transition into horrified and crazy mother was smooth. She was so good and deserves all the acting awards.

My biggest problem with this movie is that it feels like two movies that somehow got combined into one movie. The first half was a movie about a movie struggling with loss and how she coped with it. How the brother is also coping with loss. Then it quickly turned into a ghost story.

I think the first half should have been cut down dramatically. We just needed to know that Annie's mother wasn't the best, she suffered a lot of loss and had a strained relationship until Charlie was born. Then when the accident with Charlie happens it could spend more time with Annie learning more about her mother. We didn't need a good half hour of this movie. I wanted to see more of the last half and less of the first half.

That being said I have a lot of questions. Since the plan was to use Charile for the vessel of the god the witches (are they witches?) to worship did they always plan to move Charlie into a male body? If so, was Charlie always going to die? Was the plan to always use Peter? What is the device that Charlie is making? What is it used for? We see Joan had made the device to bring back her grandson as well but we have no idea what it is. Was Joan bringing back her Grandson so they could use him for the god or was she just bringing him back because she missed him?

People are calling this the best horror film of 2018 and I would agree. While I was bored the first half, once it picked up it didn't stop. It's a beautiful movie with great visuals. The ending is weird and left me with so many more questions, more than what I listed here. Am I going to watch it again? No, but I don't think that is a bad thing. I got what I needed from it. It's not really scary by any means but it creeps you out big time. It's unsettling and for that reason I do recommend it but just don't think too hard about the plot holes.

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