Three years ago, Sundance Film Festival audiences didn’t know what hit them when Robert Eggers‘ “The Witch” rolled into Park City. The unique and unnerving horror flick became the talk of the festival, and an arthouse hit. Now, tastemakers A24 have another sensation on their hands with “Hereditary.” The film from writer and director Ari Aster also dominated chatter around Sundance last week (we called it a “game-changing masterpiece”), and the boutique distributor is keeping the heat on the film as they get ready to release it cinemas this summer.
Starring Toni Collette (in a ferocious performance), Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne, the story revolves around a woman who begins to uncover the terrifying secrets rooted in her family tree, following the passing of her mother. Here’s the official synopsis:
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited. Making his feature debut, writer-director Ari Aster unleashes a nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.
“Hereditary” hits cinemas on June 8th.
