Wow! I have to be honest. There were a couple of thoughts that crossed my mind. One: I did not know how to describe or analyze my experiences after watching this movie. It had been a long time since I had that feeling. Annihilation from early this year came close but the last time it had happened to me was watching the divisive horror film last year, It Comes at Night, which came from the same studio, A24. I kinda liked that movie but I did not want to watch it again. Two: And, here is a shocker, I did not want to review this movie at a full length because I wanted you to experience for yourselves as to what is going on throughout the whole story. I know that it will not satisfy many horror fans because you need to think. People will also struggle whether or not this is a horror movie or a psychological thriller. This movie is very effective of not pinpointing the long-awaited cliches that it delivers on unpredictability, suspense and dread that will make you quiver with fear long after it is over.
Annie Graham (Toni Collette) has lost her mother, Ellen Leigh. She attends her funeral with her husband, Steven (Gabriel Byrne) and their children, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Annie does not normally grieve the way their children loses their mother as she and Ellen Leigh has not many common interests. The Graham family live somewhere in the woods. Annie designs scale models in which she is familiar with. She starts to see some kind of figure hidden in the shadows, but when she turns on the light, the figure vanishes.
Annie goes to a grief counseling session to discuss what kind of person Ellen was as Charlie and Peter start to hallucinate. After a tragedy, the family becomes bitter and disbanded as two members avoid contact. In another grief counseling session, Annie meets a woman named Joan (Ann Dowd), who also had a tragedy in which his son and grandson got killed. When she is at home later on, Annie makes models that are so detailed that it becomes grotesque as Steven scolds her for it and she replies that Peter hopefully never sees what she is creating.
This is a tough movie to talk about without spoiling. The movie appears to be a horror film but it my mind it is a torturous psychological family drama thriller with aspects of horror that is unsettling and can be in your mind hours after it is over. I would not be surprised that you will get nightmares after the conclusion. I believe torturous is best description for this movie but in a grandiose fashion because you do not know what is coming. Plus, the structure is not as familiar as it takes its time to develop the characters, to understand what the characters are going through and if it may be real. To be honest, this movie toys with you until the very end and keeps you guessing. And, I like the sense of scary ambiguity throughout the movie as it makes you unsettled watching what these people going through.
I think A24 needs to start campaigning for Toni Collette to get a Best Actress nomination at the very least. She is chilling and mesmerizing and fits well right in that wheel house of actresses that fit for the horror genre. It is a calculated performance that never seems to take a wrong step and she channels in that rage and sadness that is in the context of a mother in the middle of a paranoid, familial and (not to give anything away) insoluble dilemma. She gives one of the most extraordinary performances of her career and in the horror genre. Gabriel Byrne is quite good as the father and Alex Wolff gives his best performance as the brother who is left with all that guilt and anger inside of him for most of the movie. Ann Dowd is quite creepy as the person who is not what see seems to be.
This is director Ari Aster's debut and he knows the details to make a technical and challenging movie that makes you think. It is an unsettling and metaphorical journey about a family being in angst amidst a tragedy. You see visions of macabre images of people that translate into being in Hell. It is hellish and that sense of agitation and discomfort in its journey is what progresses into that questionable but dreadful final destination, in a good way. This movie is quite similar to both Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist because they both creep up on you in its entirety. People will complain about its slow burn in the beginning but I did not mind it this time as you can see that they are not an entirely normal family. This movie will divide people and this time around, I'm on the side of praising for its ambitions to not let their guard by presenting a shattering portrait of family that is darker than usual in a horror movie in a long time. It is once again, in a series of recent fantastic horror movies, a great horror movie that can be analyzed and studied and I would not argue with you to ever watch it again. I may not.
****
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