The Roots Of Evil

FIRST-TIME DIRECTOR ARI ASTER’S FAMILY HORROR HEREDITARY IS AN ASTONISHING FULL-STRENGTH NIGHTMARE. HE REVEALS THE TWISTED INSPIRATIONS THAT SPAWNED IT.

- Olly Richards

THE FIRST TIME Ari Aster watched his debut movie, Hereditary, with an audience, he assumed they “thought it was a piece of shit”. It was at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, whose attendees should absolutely be the market for the film’s brand of emotional horror. Aster was hoping for screams and shouting, but for most of the film’s two-hour running time there was silence. “I was terrified,” says the 31 year old, “because I just wanted people to not hate it… The audience felt heavy.” When the credits came there was just a little more silence. Then applause and cheering erupted. What Aster had heard, or rather not heard, was not an audience bored but one paralysed by fear.

Hereditary is one of those movies about which one should not say much. Not because to give away any of its twists would ruin the story — it would still likely terrify you half to death if you knew every beat — but because to know anything more than the basics would rob you of one of the best horror experiences of the decade. To give the cleanest bones of the story, it centres on the Graham family: mother Annie (Toni Collette), father Steve (Gabriel Byrne), and teenage kids Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Graham). Annie’s mother, a cold, mysterious woman, has recently died and left the Grahams in a confused state, part grieving, part relieved. As increasingly horrible events start occurring, the family begin to wonder what secrets grandma hid and what, if anything, they can do to escape them.