HEREDITARY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening tonight at a dark, scary multiplex near us all:

HEREDITARY (Dir. Ari Aster, 2018) 

Writer/director Ari Aster’s first feature-length project, HEREDITARY, begins with one of my favorite shots I’ve seen this year at the movies. The camera closes in on a dollhouse in a room full of miniature sets, until one of the house’s rooms seamlessly blends into a shot of the real room it’s modeled after - a teenage boy’s bedroom.

The teenager, Peter (Alex Wolff), is a member of a classic nuclear family made up of his parents Annie and Steve Graham (Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne), and his sister, Charlie (Milly Shapiro) who live in a nice house somewhere in the woods of Utah (at least that’s where it was shot). We meet the Grahams on the morning of the funeral for Annie’s mother, and the feeling of grief is palpable in the film’s tense tone.

Later, Annie, who’s profession is as a maker of the miniatures used in the opening, sees an apparition of her mother in her workshop, the first such instance of the supernatural which makes her research the subject and suspect that her mother kept some creepy stuff secret from her.

Annie keeps her own secret from her family about going to support group meetings in which we learn of her father’s grim death. Meanwhile, her son, the pot smoking Peter, schemes to go to a party in hopes of scoring a date with a classmate (Mallory Bechtel), but is forced to take his 13-year old sister along. 

While Charlie is unattended to, she eats some cake that has nuts in it (we were told earlier about her allergies) and starts to go into anaphylactic shock *. Peter frantically drives to get Charlie to the hospital, but she gets killed in a grisly accident in which she gets decapitated. 

What’s really f-ed up is that Annie makes a miniature diorama of the accident scene, complete with a doll’s bloody head in the road in back of a toy car, and, for obvious reasons, this freaks out her husband Steve played by Byrne, who superbly relays exasperation and concern for his loved ones.

Peter begins seeing apparitions of Charlie, while Annie meets a woman at a meeting (Ann Dowd – Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale!) who holds séances to communicate with the dead, and we witness drawings being made by ghosts, the mother and son going into violent trances, and feel the undercurrent of a conspiracy decorated with satanic imagery.

HEREDITARY is top notch horror, but it’s through its strong depiction of strained family drama that makes it the powerful experience it is. Collette, no stranger to creepy kids and ghosts since her breakthrough performance 20 years ago in THE SIXTH SENSE, acts her ass off here. She’s enthrallingly committed to her role in every moment, which made me simultaneously scared for her and scared of her throughout.

Filmmaker Aster has named such vintage horror flicks as THE INNOCENTS, ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE EXORCIST, and THE SHINING as inspirations, but the film feels more in line with such recent psychologically disturbing works as THE WITCH, KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, and IT COMES AT NIGHT (all titles from this film’s studio, A24).

With a debut that’s as dark and twisted as it is brilliantly inspired, Aster’s career as a new master of the macabre is off to an extremely scary start.

* Before the screening I went to at the newly opened Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Raleigh, a rep did an intro and said that during the movie they will pass out pieces of cake - “if anyone has nut allergies don’t eat it” she warned. How’s that for synergy?

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James Gandolfini Dates Julia Louis-Dreyfus In His Fine Final Film ENOUGH SAID

Now playing at an indie art house theater near you:

ENOUGH SAID (Dir. Nicole Holofcener, 2013)

It’s a testament to the talents of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late great James Gandolfini that I forgot about Elaine Bendis and Tony Soprano, i.e. their iconic characters from Seinfeld and The Sopranos, while watching Nicole Holofcener’s newest indie rom com ENOUGH SAID.

Sure, Louis-Dreyfus has some of Elaine’s neurotic neediness, and Gandolfini shares some of Tony’s unhealthy appetites, but the people they portray here are grounded in a more stable sensibility. A sensibility that will be recognizable to those who’ve seen Holofcener’s previous movies that have largely dealt with modern women coming to terms with, well, being modern women, and always have Catherine Keener in them (see: WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY & AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH WOMEN, PLEASE GIVE).

Here Keener plays Gandolfini’s ex-wife, a successful poet (successful enough to know Joni Mitchell) who hires Louis-Dreyfus to be her masseuse after befriending her at a party. Unknown to Keener, Louis-Dreyfus has begun dating Gandolfini, who she met at the same party.

So when Keener complains at length about her ex-husband during their sessions, Louis-Dreyfus is making all kinds of mental notes about her new beau’s faults. Louis-Dreyfus wants a playbook to guide her through the emotional minefield of when dating somebody gets serious, and for a time Keener unknowingly serves that purpose.

This hilariously comes to a head when Louis-Dreyfus can’t help picking on him about such things as the calories in guacamole at a dinner party with Toni Collette and Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy’s husband that you may remember as the Air Marshall in BRIDESMAIDS). On the uneasy drive home, Gandolfini remarks: “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?”

Despite its rom com-style plotting – i.e. one half of a couple is keeping something from the other until they get way in over their head – ENOUGH SAID doesn’t strain for laughs, or go for cheap one-liners. Holofcener, who wrote the screenplay, simply wants to spend some time with some flawed folks who are making their way through a transitional period.

There’s somewhat of a misshapen subplot concerning Louis-Dreyfus’s daughter (Tracey Fairaway) leaving home for college, with the mother over compensating by becoming way too close to her daughter’s best friend (Tracey Fairaway), but it doesn’t clutter up the main storyline.

Although Holofcener definitely has her own thing going on, in tone and relationship perspective, I was reminded of Jay and Mark Duplass’s 2010 comedy CYRUS, which also dealt with a couple who met at a party and have an obstacle or two to overcome, and also had Catherine Keener as the ex-wife. In that and in ENOUGH SAID, both very likable low key indies, I rooted strongly for the leads to stick it out.

The chemistry Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus have together is pleasing yet fleeting as we can’t help but be aware that the man is no longer with us. We can at least take a little comfort in the fact that Gandolfini has two more films in the can (small parts in NICKY DUECE and ANIMAL RESCUE set for next year), but that this is his last lead performance is very sad indeed.

ENOUGH SAID will perhaps be remembered more for that than its content, but however people come to it, most will find that it’s a thoughtful and witty take on the insecurities involved with taking a second chance at love. It really shows how good Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were together working with Holofcener's moody material that that’s the real takeaway.

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