Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, and Gabriel Byrne
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 128 mins. Reviewed in May 2018
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This American supernatural horror thriller tells the story of a family that is haunted by the spirit of its dead matriarch. Members of the family struggle to cope with the secrets that her death reveals about themselves and their past. It the first feature film for its Director, Ari Aster.
Psychiatrist-husband, Steve Graham (Gabriel Byrne) is the father of two children, Peter (Alex Wolff), and Charlie (Milly Shapiro), both of whom behave oddly. He pressures them to attend the funeral of their 78-year old, reclusive grandmother, Ellen Taper Leigh, and at the funeral his wife, Annie (Toni Collette) delivers a begrudging eulogy for her mother. The only one who seems to care about Ellen a great deal is Charlie, Ellen’s favourite grand-daughter, who starts to behave increasingly oddly, and attracts strange forces to her, including the spirit of her dead grandmother.
After Ellen’s funeral, the family unravels secrets related to its past, that surface in coded or hidden messages, while Ellen retains a supernatural, malevolent presence among them. Events take a turn for the worst when Steve Graham receives a phone call telling him that his mother-in-law’s grave has been desecrated. Not until later, do we learn who in the family was responsible.
This movie is out to terrify. Its measured pace, shadowy cinematography, and morbid visual imagery are brought together, under Aster’s creative direction, to create an atmosphere of dread that evokes alarm and shock. Nearly always, terror erupts unexpectedly which might satisfy ardent devotees of the horror genre, but could traumatise others – the film escalates terror, and hardly ever lets it go. In many ways, the film reminds one of the “Exorcist” (1973) where horror was explored through the consequences of mental illness – in this film, illness characterises members of the Graham family, and some of those around it, but also Ellen who was disturbed.
The film tells us that the fate of each member of the Graham family is determined by “hereditary”, and none of them are really able to heal themselves. They war and quarrel with each other, and all the while the behaviour of the family is being viewed by some third party, the identity of whom we learn in the film’s final moments. A special legacy of guilt exists for Annie, and the film is an adult psychological study of the mental instability of an entire family, expressed traumatically.
The movie uses scary images, and constantly attempts to blur the dividing line between nightmarish dreaming and reality. It shows decapitated heads, people in flames with charred remains left behind, children choking and clucking, ants crawling over and eating dead bodies, demonic possession, naked devil worshippers, and headless corpses found in surprising places.
This family drama steeps itself in the supernatural with good doses of devil worship and occultism thrown in for good measure. The direction by Ari Aster is original, and capitalises cleverly on fear of the unknown, and Toni Collette vacillates impressively – though a little too hysterically – between being a grieving woman, a devastated mother, and a person who is demonically possessed.
By its very nature, this movie has no redeeming positive message to communicate at all. It is not suitable for children, and perhaps young adolescents, without parental supervision, and it may unsettle anyone who sees it. In Grand Guignol style, slowly delivered, it engages in emotional terrorism with ghoulish delight. Deliberately, its Director, Ari Aster, successively delivers horror strikes, that he earnestly wants to be felt, and he uses multiple twists and turns in the film’s plot line to keep the viewer guessing until the very end.
This is a film that is deeply entrenched in the horror genre, and it plays the rules of the horror game toughly. It is clever and original, though, and these features single it out as a horror film with an impact, that is well above the ordinary.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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