Aaron Hendrix’s review published on Letterboxd:
*cluck*
In the best scene of M. Night Shyamalan's masterwork, The Sixth Sense, Toni Collette is confronted with a repressed memory of her late mother when her son, Cole, answers a long-forgotten question she asked to her mother shortly after her passing. It's a moment that establishes Shyamalan's central metaphor - ghosts as the emotional residue of moments and emotions lost to time - succinctly and poignantly.
Much like Shyamalan's tragedy masquerading as horror, Ari Aster's Hereditary uses grief to anchor its horror in something tangible and something universal. And, for the first two acts of it, Hereditary brilliantly explores the frustration and numbness of grief. In one utterly extraordinary scene - certainly the best I've seen all year - Collette bursts in a geyser of rage and stark honesty. Much like the phallic intrusion of the chestburster in Alien, repressed emotions bubbling just subsurface erupt around the dinner table - the symbol of tranquil communal unity - and Aster just stews in the discomfort, rage, and sorrow. He offers no cushion for us to land on and it works *beautifully*.
But, in Hereditary's final act, as it revs up to a preposterously adrenaline fueled climax, it somehow swings for The Conjuring (or The Conjuring 2 for that matter) and lands somewhere just short. Make no mistake, the climax of Hereditary is spine-tingling stuff and much like the best scene in The Conjuring 2, all the spooky bits are laid out on the table before us with a confidence befitting the stunning technique on display. But, where The Conjuring 2 manages to continue to anchor its spookiest bits to the central theme of film - faith - Hereditary sort of slides into a creepshow spectacular (and *spectacular* it is). So, when it reveals the last card in its deck - a wonderfully atmospheric moment and revelation to be sure - it feels as though the central idea of grief and the untidy resolutions left in its wake has been partially abandoned for a new metaphor.
Still, Hereditary is top-tier modern horror. It pulls from everything from The Shining to Carrie to The Sixth Sense to The Conjuring. Aster shows the restraint of Jack Clayton when he made The Innocents and the grab-you-by-the-throat-and-throttle-you-til-you're-blue technique of James Wan. Aster is definitely a modern horror master in the making. I give Hereditary a 4/5.