Film Review – Hereditary

Over the past two years, studio A24 has built something of a reputation for releasing challenging horror pictures, trying to capture an audience perhaps a little woozy from blockbuster consumption, in need of something slow-burn and slightly radical to help realign moviegoing chakras. There was “The Witch” and last summer’s “It Comes at Night,” with both efforts working to unsettle viewers instead of simply scaring them. A24’s latest addition to this ongoing experiment is “Hereditary,” which also samples from the slow-burn chiller playbook, along with several other films. Writer/director Ari Aster creates a mix tape of genre events for this deliberate endeavor, obsessing over mood and frenzied moments as he constructs something that’s difficult to decode in one sitting, but isn’t powerful or concise enough to demand a second. “Hereditary” is haunting in stretches, but Aster doesn’t know when to quit, threatening to ruin a good thing with needless overkill.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com