Horror is a genre I’ve always felt has the most potential to really play with an audience, the ability to manipulate fear and dread in viewers is a feat i feel takes a lot of skill. Not to belittle jump scares or slasher films, but horror works best with atmosphere and Heredity just oozes the stuff. Writer and Director Ari Aster uses every frame of the film to tell the audience something is wrong. From exterior shots of the family home looking unreal and dollhouse like, to day to night transitions being abrupt and sudden. The look and sound of the film create a dreadful experience. There were times were there was an off putting bass line i assumed was from a neighboring theater, but it was the movie reminding me not to feel safe here, nothing about this film is here to invite you in. The atmosphere makes you feel trapped, you wince and feel sorrow for the family as things get worse, conversations are awkward and emotional and you feel stuck and can’t leave.  That ingenious mix of true horror in the sense of moments like a son standing outside of his parents bedroom as his mother wails in mourning, to the more surreal occult things like otherworldly voices and a seance gone horribly wrong. The camera creates geometry with the setting creating a familiarity with the audience. We know the proximity from a tree house to the main house, we can recognize a building extra due to the shots matching from our first visit there. There is a deft devious hand guiding us through the process, a process we want to desperately leave.

This kind of slow methodical horror is supported by a cast good enough to carry that weight. Toni Collette is impressive showing this woman’s slow decent from grief to anger to madness and having that path be realistic as well as understandable.  I found myself shaking my head in pity and sadness during many of her breakout moments and flashes of anger and fear. Her journey is the most important and she sells you each step of the way, her madness and confusion becomes the audience as we follow her down the rabbit hole. The other breakout actor is new actor Alex Wolff playing Peter, the older son of Collete’s character. His emotive and caring face becomes more twisted and afraid as the film unfolds and his confusion, much like the veteran’s Collette is palatable.  The things that happen to this young man hurt him more than on the surface level, he expresses a bubbling sorrow underneath his soft featured demeanor. There is a moment where he is being yelled at by his mother and his face showed a pain and sorrow not expected of an actor so young.  Supporting characters like the daughter Charlie, playing the creepy in a convincing way by Milly Shapiro and the always great Mallory Bechtel as someone we are not sure we can trust and her cheery attitude becomes unsettling as the film weaves its tale.

All of this great acting and atmosphere mean nothing without a solid story to connect all of those elements. Heredity tells its story in a very slow, very real way. Things tend to escalate naturally but guided by a sinister hand. Events happen in the world that have a hugely dramatic effect on everything. The cast isnt huge and the family is the main focus for a reason, the story is about them and its themes inhabit them.  Without going too much into spoilers but the dead grandmother was into some weird things, and even though she is dead, that long forgotten part of herself has infected the family. How it does this is what makes this movie so terrifying, we see as that infection slowly poisons almost every member of the family. The marriage is strained, work life is impacted, communication disappears, and for a while this can all be interpreted as grief but as more is revealed the evil makes itself known. That makes this film great in my opinion, the evil seems to attach itself to the grief and the lines begin to get blurred. Did this character act this way due to a perceived possession or are they still in grief? Until the later half, its not always clear, but once the evil reveals itself, its clear how and why it was powerful enough to dig its claws into the family and the audience.