Horror films may be big business but they largely seem to fall into the shocker / slasher category. However the Oscar-nomination for Get Out suggests that audience and pundits appreciate a psychological story that has a bit more to say or wrong-foots the viewer.
The recent Sundance Film Festival brought acclaim for a handful of movies and Hereditary, due in cinemas on 8th June in the US (no UK release date as yet), heads the pack of interesting future releases.
The synopsis reads:
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited. Making his feature debut, writer-director Ari Aster unleashes a nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.
The film features Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, The Sixth Sense, Please Stand By…) Gabriel Byrne (Miller’s Crossing, The Usual Suspects) as the parents of the family.
Several pundits have already said that the film is genuinely different from a lot of the other ‘horror’ films out there and could cut as distinctive a slice of paranoia and psychological unease as the likes of Hammer‘s The Wicker Man.
Here’s a look at the very disturbing trailer:
