This year’s Hereditary has been hailed as the scariest movie in recent years, but I don’t feel that it does this film justice. It is terrifying on a psychological level, but the traditional jump scares and scare tactics are minimal. Instead, we are left with a film that examines grief, PTSD, the loss of a loved one, dealing with the consequences, and recognising the responsibilities and role of a parent in times of crisis. I think it’s also about living with the inability to understand or read your own parent and living with the confusion and frustration. It is “scary” in the sense that from the parents’ perspective, getting the call that your child has died or coming to terms with that is scarier than any horror movie imaginable, and that’s what makes Hereditary really so visceral. On top of that, it’s a very subversive film, killing off seemingly major characters and confounding our expectations of plot progression and storyline. For me, I felt that they could have done without the whole cult subplot – it was fun, reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby in some ways, but if the focus of the film had just been mental illness and dealing with what comes after the catalyst, I think the film would have worked just as well.

After the death of her eccentric mother, Annie (Toni Collette) tries to come to terms with her grief and joins local support groups. She lives with her husband Steve and teenage son Peter and young daughter Charlie (she creeped me the fuck out). Charlie shows signs of psychopathic behaviour from the onset, cutting off a pigeon’s head with scissors among things (thankfully they used a mould for the actual scene) and just having an empty, soulless look about her. After she has an anaphylactic shock at a party with Peter after eating cake with nuts in it, Peter drives her to the hospital and she accidentally ends up decapitated. With both family deaths on her mind, Annie’s sanity starts to deteriorate. She subconsciously blames her son for her death, has disturbing sleepwalking episodes, and rants maniacally to her husband about an apparent demonic cult that her mother was involved in and malevolently involved the family in (hence the movie’s name). I didn’t expect the filmmakers to kill off Charlie so early in the film and I certainly didn’t expect the cult stuff to be true, but it’s really compelling storytelling and interlinks with Annie’s own crumbling sanity. Collette is the main focus of most of the movie, but she gives a fantastic performance as a woman spiralling out of control; hysterical, raving, and slowly coming apart. I really connected with her husband, who suffers in his own way but appears more quiet about it and more sympathetic, although perhaps he’s not developed enough to know how his own PTSD manifests. And the actress who plays Charlie does a fine job – the creepy child reminded me of the seemingly demonic child Miles in The Turn of the Screw.

It’s a great debut from Ari Aster and I can definitely see the comparisons with The Witch and Rosemary’s Baby. As mentioned, I would have preferred to see more the exploration of the grief narrative rather than the additional substance of the cult plotline, but it’s still pretty great and one of the best horror movies I’ve seen recently. Definitely worth a watch!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wWKNij_1M]

Pyewacket is a great little Canadian indie horror gem about a teenage girl whose father has recently died and as a consequence of arguing with her overprotective mother, decides to summon a demon with even more disastrous consequences. Canadian Nicole Muñoz is excellent as the lead Leah, who is really into black metal and the occult and totally badass (I loved her immediately). Laurie Holden (The Mist, Andrea in The Walking Dead) is also great as her mother Mrs Reyes, who is coming to terms with a few demons of her own and runs the challenge of rebuilding her broken life and raising a teenage daughter.

I read online that Pyewacket is has similarities to Ladybird, which also came out in 2017. It’s true that both films concern mothers and daughters and the relationship between them, but Pyewacket heads into much darker (and more interesting territory). What does one do when they lose their temper and say things that can irrevocably hurt another but don’t really mean it? What if that thing is a demon? That’s one of the consequences of the film, and it makes the viewer think twice about the things we say and the consequences of what we do. It’s also a coming-of-age film; Leah is a young woman who needs a good friend and has experienced things that most of us will never experience at her age. It’s always hard with high school too. The occult offers her the consolation she seeks, empowering her as a young woman and not passing judgement as her mother tends to do. Her mother is also a very sympathetic character – how do you begin to understand and care for a rebel teen when your partner has just passed away and you can’t really take care of yourself anymore?

The mother’s solution is to move to an isolated house in the middle of woods (those options never go down well), which seems very reminiscent of the original The Evil Dead. We also meet some interesting characters along the way, including Leah’s male friend Aaron who is obviously interested in her as well as Rowan Dove, a famous author who writes about the occult and whom Leah gets in contact with (at first I didn’t realise he was a fictional character and I was so interested in his books that I actually looked him up…whoops). It’s a slow burner, but the payoff is great, featuring a gut-punch finale which seems inevitable but still jarring and shocking. There’s also strong similarities to The Witch in terms of female empowerment and supernatural agency, but whereas Thomasin experiences a feminist awakening at the end of the film (at the cost of her Puritan family), Leah is empowered by her interest and use of the occult earlier in the film and makes an accidental and devastating mistake that leads to the horror at the core of the film. It’s not just about supernatural demons though; it is about the demons between mother and daughter, and about the personal demons that they continue to try to overcome as the film progresses. They are strong women, but they are in dire consequences, and such things do not always end well. Pyewacket is a great watch though and a pleasure to watch on the Canadian indie film scene (up there with other Canadian horror greats like Ginger Snaps 1 and 2) and horror scene in general. Check it out when you can.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bbtAKNi_j8&w=560&h=315]