Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) — Midsommar caught me off-guard as one of my favorite films of 2019, but I didn’t vote for it as Best Surprise because I assumed I wouldn’t have been so surprised if I’d actually seen Hereditary beforehand (and also because I thought it’d be nominated for Best Picture, oops). I now have no idea how it would’ve played out if I’d seen Hereditary first. On the one hand, I think I would’ve been a little disappointed at some of the similarities between the two films (e.g., they both end with a crowning, something which could eventually make for one of the more interesting Director Trademarks on IMDb); but, on the other hand, I think I would’ve been fairly impressed at how much Aster had honed his craft between his debut and his sophomore effort. In many ways, Hereditary is something of a rough draft for Midsommar. It’s a film of moments that never fully coheres. Some of those moments/shots are pretty great, though, despite often feeling like a hodepodge of borrowings from earlier horror films. Toni Collette’s performance was overshadowed, for me, by her own superior performance in the Netflix miniseries Unbelievable and by Ann Dowd’s performance as the Ruth Gordon character. I pretty much last remember Dowd as Tom Hank’s sister in Philadelphia, even though she seems more familiar than that. I think the film would’ve benefited from another couple scenes with her (and maybe a couple fewer scenes of Alex Wolff trying to cry). Grade C+
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