Some horrors work like ghost trains, serving audiences with jolts and shocks, but balanced with knowing fun, wit and relief. Others aim to all-out terrify, building the nightmarish tension higher and higher until you’re truly dreading the resolution. Hereditary is firmly in the latter camp — and even in the year of A Quiet Place and Ghost Stories, it's perhaps 2018’s scariest movie.
To say too much about it would be to spoil things, but the film follows the Graham family — mother Annie, husband Steve, son Peter and daughter Charlie — in the wake of Annie’s mother’s recent death. In the role of Annie is Toni Collette, and we’ve got an exclusive image of the character looking thoroughly freaked out.
Even more impressively, the film marks the feature debut of writer-director Ari Aster, who previously honed his craft in a series of short films. “All my worst nightmares are about family, either something horrible happening to them or them turning against me,” he told Empire in the latest issue. “I wanted to make something that harkened back to the ‘60s and ‘70s ones I loved, like Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby.”
Read more about Hereditary in the new issue of Empire, on sale now and available online here{
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