I saw Hereditary at the theatre yesterday and I needed a day to collect my thoughts to make sure the rating I'm giving is accurate.

It has its moments of unease and also has its fair share of unexpected turns. There is plenty of suspense throughout but around 3/4 of the way through, when the seance stuff starts to overtake the movie, I was slowly becoming disappointed as it felt like the many curious and meticulously crafted scenes so far were ultimately leading up to some sort of mainstream Ouija or Conjuring universe movie which has been done to death. However, the last couple of acts swoop in to save the day with a balance of genuine intensity and insanity that you won't find in many other movies at this time.

With that being said, there is a certain complexity to this movie which is likely to command repeat viewings to understand everything that unfolds, especially in the latter stages of the movie. I don't completely understand everything that happened during my first viewing but I am intrigued enough to re-visit it again when it's available on bluray and hopefully pick up a few things that flew over my head the first time around.

Heridtary is a well-acted and interesting watch which leads with suspense rather than just loading up on cheap jump scares.

This movie, which has gotten a decent amount of praise since it's release earlier this year, certainly had a strong sense of tension, suspense, and unease. However, it also seemed to lack some coherence toward the end.

Which isn't to say that there aren't tons of explanations online - I'm sure there are. But the movie needs to stand for itself, and I won't say that I wasn't put off by the route this movie took. It was interesting, but I wanted more explanation than we ever really got.

Much of the movie feels more like a tense and uncomfortable family drama following the death of a family member, and these scenes are done well. When the horror elements begin showing up more, they're also mostly done well. Many leave you guessing exactly where this movie is going (and that's something that's true up toward the end of the film, actually). As for the conclusion, though, I'm not sure I find it all that satisfactory, at least in how it was presented.

The cast was solid throughout, especially Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Toni Collette (and to be fair, these three make up most of the screen-time anyway). Collette's increasingly erratic behaviour as the film goes on is a sight to behold, and for as young as his is, Wolff's performance here is pretty decent (although at times I felt he overacted a bit).

Hereditary is a bit difficult to talk about right now, having just finished it twenty or so minutes ago. I'm still trying to digest some of it. But my first impression is that it seems like the type of movie you'd need to watch again to better appreciate it, and though the tone of the movie is great, and there's an utterly shocking scene relatively early into the film that I applaud, given it's over two hours long, and I wasn't really sold on the conclusion, that's not something I see myself committing to. For now I'd rate this somewhere around average, though it had potential to be more.