Hungkat’s review published on Letterboxd:
Family drama peaks in 2018.
Squeak, bleak and dourly tragic, these pages are accompanied with warped lines and ghoulish faces, drawn by flexing dark force, dedicated as an endless punishment for the livings. This sacrifice will surely yield great rewards. Second time ‘round, it is more depressing than ever to witness such inexplicably sudden decline of familial matters as traumatizing set pieces are dropped on the creaking floor. Ari Aster with his piercing garrote and salami knife, crudely capable of tearing, slicing and dicing our squelching fleshes and the daunting result is unequivocally blood-seething and emotionally alarming. Zoom-into the crippled toy house, spacious gloomy nooks and uninvited trees’ shadows. Even though I knew what was going to happen, my own eyes could not help but leering away from the sickly uncontrollable nature of events taking place.
Make it stop! Make it stop!
Real horror plays on human afflictions, guilts and mental anguish, unawarely shaping vengeful spirits in our own imaginations. The grieving mind is a hellscape for diabolical creatures to pry into and humans, therefore, have to embrace their insanity by sleepwalking through the evil curse of lucidity. Sadistically dousing in paint thinner and get ready to burn. Chocolate cake, nuts, street pole, family dinner, shouts of rejection, ants, flies and…collective heads. This is a work of the devil himself, lashing with sharp-edged chills instead of applying rowdy BOO-jerks. The icy & wicked dead air gives us a quick few seconds to think and gasp at the unbelievable consequences that coalesce and hang above like guillotine blades. Hereditary is a devastating household portrait that is utterly bereft of liveliness, using the mangled family’s dynamic as a tool to possess and unremittingly spook until we promptly throw ourselves out of the window, only to discover our torsos have abnormally flown up to the next realm of infernal nightmare. Salivas drooling, tongue clicks and eyes-wide gawking at the crumbled lives bowing beneath; it is truly the end of the world.
Now lemme go hug my mom.
XXX
Hail Paimon