Fans of indie cinema are likely already familiar with A24’s Hereditary. The studio (best known for The Witch and Moonlight) has been aggressively marketing the horror film all year, eager to capitalize on an audience hungry for the genre. The trailer has been a constant presence, promising to be “This generation’s The Exorcist.” In spite of this full-force push, nothing can really prepare you for Hereditary’s particular brand of white-knuckle chills.

The debut feature from Ari Aster is a film primarily about grief. After the sudden loss of their grandmother, the Graham family is thrust into mourning. Annie (Toni Collette) weighs the legacy of their troubled relationship, seeking reprieve in her art — a series of autobiographical miniatures. Her son Peter (Alex Wolff), struggles to balance his own grief with life as a high school burnout. Collette and Wolff deliver career-high performances and fuel one of the film’s core sources of tension.

Horror excels when it finds the existing stressors in our everyday lives and pushes them to impossible highs. For Hereditary, that stress is family. The Grahams are a unit on the verge of implosion, held together by thin bonds that are mercilessly tested by grief. It’s the unique love within families that makes them such a sensitive subject, one Hereditary masterfully spins into a macabre, gruesome thriller.

Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski utilizes Annie’s miniatures throughout the film, framing rooms like shoebox dioramas. The resulting effect is voyeuristic, adding punch to the film’s most emotionally raw moments. As the tension builds, the scares are kept to a restrained level — only hitting at the most sensitive opportunities. Hereditary is as much of a family drama as it is a horror film, uniting the two under a shared desire to exploit human vulnerabilities.

Ultimately, the larger mysteries of Hereditary feel like a loose thread that only serve the bloody conclusion the film desires. It’s easy to lose track of exactly how the climax is coming to pass and exactly what internal logic the film is obeying to make it happen. Yet this distortion almost feels intentional, a real portrayal of how desperate minds come to solid conclusions from shaky foundations.

Hereditary is an easy recommendation to any modern horror fan. See it in as packed a theater as possible, just to share in a perfectly wild and unique cinematic moment.

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