Hereditary (R)
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This came out in 2918, but I didn't see it until 2025. I was kind of eager to see it, because it got really good reviews. A lot of people seem to think it's one of the scariest movies ever. Unfortunately, I only kind of liked it. It definitely had some scary parts, and a lot of disturbing parts, but overall I didn't find it as scary as most critics did. It has some vaguely supernatural elements, but it's mostly psychological horror. And I think it kind of works on that level, but again, not as well as most critics feel it does. For me, the film is somewhat hampered by the fact that I was never quite sure what was really going on. Like, how much of the "supernatural" part of the film was really supernatural, and how much was purely psychological. And there's a supposed descent into madness, but I couldn't say for sure if Annie was really going crazy, or reacting reasonably to the legitimately unnerving things that were happening. And the end of the movie... made everything even less clear to me than it had been up to that point. I was sorely tempted to file my review under "weird" instead of horror, but ultimately I decided it probably is a proper horror movie.

So, it begins after the death of a secretive woman named Ellen, who had been estranged from her daughter, Annie Graham (Toni Collette). Annie also has a strained relationship with her 16-year-old son, Peter, for a reason I won't spoil. And her 13-year-old daughter, Charlie, seems pretty strange. Annie's husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), is supportive at first, but as Annie seems to become more and more unhinged, he gets fed up. Anyway, things get worse for Annie's mental state after the death of Charlie, though I won't spoil how that happened. It was probably the most disturbing scene in the movie. (If you see a critic or anyone refer to "that scene", Charlie's death is what they're talking about.) It also makes matters worse between Annie and Peter. Following her mother's death, Annie reluctantly went to a support group meeting, and following Charlie's death, she nearly goes back, but decides against it. However, she does meet a woman named Joan outside the meeting place, and she eventually convinces Annie to attempt a séance with Steve and Peter, to contact Charlie. And that... is also pretty disturbing.

Well, a lot of other stuff happens that I mostly don't want to spoil. Some of it is definitely supernatural, and ultimately I guess a cult (or coven, or something) turns out to be involved in everything that's been going on. But I won't spoil any details of that. I don't fully understand it, anyway. And there's one thing about all of this that makes no sense to me. The cult (or whatever) wants to use Peter's body for something, but only because they were disappointed that Charlie had been born a girl. What I don't understand is why they even cared about Charlie when they already had Peter (because he was older than Charlie), and could have probably used him all along. Anyway... I don't mean to give the impression that I thought it was a bad movie. It's actually really good in a lot of ways. Definitely very creepy and atmospheric, and Collette's acting was really good. I'm sorry that I just couldn't manage to enjoy the movie more than I did.