Hereditary (2018) ***1/2

This is one that I wasn't so sure about when I finished watching it. Sure, it was creepy as hell, but it was also confusing as hell, and I wasn't really sure what I had just seen. It took reading some explanations on the internet for me to decide that “Hereditary” is a decent horror flick.

Toni Collette plays Annie, married to Steve (Gabriel Byrne), with two kids, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Charlie, by the way, is weird and weird-looking, an emotionally and physically stunted 13-year-old who likes to make weird noises and cut the heads off of dead animals. The story starts with the family headed to the funeral of Annie's mom Ellen, another odd duck. As Annie declares at the eulogy, “My mother was a private person. She had private rituals.” Little surprise, then, that there are so many strangers at the funeral. More surprising to Steve, (although not to us, because this is a horror film, after all) is when he gets a call that Ellen's grave has been dug up.

Steve decides not to upset Annie with this bit of information, and so the quiet, tense family goes along with their sort-of grieving. Charlie, who was close to Ellen, is the only one who misses her, although both she and Annie start seeing Ellen's apparition.

Annie joins a grief support group to help her work through her complicated family history. We learn that Annie had a schizophrenic brother who committed suicide as a teen, leaving a note claiming that their mother was “trying to put people in me.” Her dad became demented and starved himself to death. Meanwhile, the relationship between Annie and Ellen was fraught even by the usual mother-daughter standards. The family had no contact with Ellen during Peter's formative years, so Annie over-compensated by letting Ellen help raise Charlie, and now Annie worries that that may have messed Charlie up.

Then a major tragedy strikes, throwing Annie into a tailspin of grief. A support group member shows Annie how to perform a séance, and in doing so, Annie unleashes a terrifying force upon the family.

That's more plot exposition than I usually like to give, but trust me, you still don't know what “Hereditary” is about, and you're smarter than I am if you understand it by the end of the movie. The atmospherics are creepy enough, with throbbing sub-bass notes in the score to remind us that this is a horror movie and not just a story about family dynamics and tragedy (We kind of need this reminder during the first half.).

Once the supernatural stuff really gets going, the movie will have you on the edge of your seat, but by the end, I was really scratching my head. This is one that you will either need to watch multiple times, read about afterwards on the internet, or both. It's actually a pretty cool, messed-up story once you understand what it is you saw. For me, there's a bit too much of an anything-can-happen-at-any-time atmosphere. I tend to prefer horror films like “Green Room,”where the monsters are actually human, or “It Follows,” where there is one supernatural element, but it follows some simple rules and logic. “Hereditary” is just all over the place. You never get that sense of control, of knowing what is going on and trying to project what the characters should do.

That's also kind of the point of “Hereditary.” Early on, there's a scene where Peter's class at school is discussing the Greek tragedy “Heracles.” They discuss the fact that the characters' fates are out of their control, and whether that makes the story more, or less, tragic. Annie and her family are pushed along towards a terrible end by forces outside their control. She tries to understand the process and fight back, but any sense of control that she, or the audience, gains in this story is illusory.

Like I said, I prefer a horror film where there is a set of rules you can grasp and then root for the main character to take control of the situation. That never works out in “Hereditary.” Weeks later, I'm still thinking about the movie, but it's mostly the mythology and the clues to what is going on. I find that I'm not at all pondering the choices the characters made, because it turns out they have no choice at all. To me, that's a weakness in the film, but I can definitely see why critics liked it. It's scary and atmospheric, and definitely worth a watch if you feel like getting creeped out.

3.5 stars out of 5