Hereditary 2018 ****

Ari Aster made a big name for himself with his debut feature Hereditary, a sombre horror flick which manages to create it’s own scary ecosystem, despite a few clichéd speed-bumps along the way. Toni Collette gives a full-on performance as Annie, a mother who struggles to control her two kids in the wake of her own mother’s death.  Charlie (Millie Shapiro) is a young girl with strange obsessions, and prone to making a strange clicking noise with her mouth. Her brother Peter (Alex Wolff) is a frustrated stoner, and unwisely agrees to take Charlie to a party where he’s hoping to make out with a girl. Things go badly awry, and Annie begins to sense that Peter may have been possessed in some way. The worst part of any horror movie is when the old books with pictures of demons and rules about how to deal with them; Hereditary keeps this kind of hokum to a minimum, and manages to create an atmosphere of pure dread, with Annie’s uncanny evocations of scenes in miniature cleverly used to throw visual curveballs at the audience. There’s some startling and occasionally sickening visuals on the way to an intense finals; Hereditary might tick all the boxes in terms of clichés, but the silliness is only visible once this nerve-jangling film is over.