I have decided to start out my movie journey with my least favorite category; horror. I have never liked horror movies since I was little. If I do watch something scary, it will typically lean more towards thriller than horror. I’ve never been a fan of paranormal movies or movies with jump scares, those are the worst! Fortunately, my best friend/roommate is a horror aficionado. My room is light, bright and pink themed. But you take a quick trip down the hall into her room and it’s black themed, full of skulls, dead bats and overall darkness. I got lots of horror movies recommendations from friends and took those into account, but ultimately decided to go straight to the Queen of Horror herself for the final picks. She gave me lots of suggestions in every category out there. For anyone who isn’t aware, there is more than one category of horror. Below is a quick outlay of the various sub-genres.

After my consult with the Queen of Horror, I decided to watch Hereditary, a recent horror movie directed by Ari Aster.  Midsommar is one of my favorite movies and it was also directed by Ari Aster, so I figured I would possibly like Hereditary. Turns out I was wrong!

As I sat down to watch Hereditary, I made sure of a couple things. First, that I had a big blanket to hide behind when any scenes scared me enough that I couldn’t bear to watch any longer. And second, that I was with friends so a horror movie would not be as intimidating. A big difference between Hereditary and Midsommar is the lighting. Midsommar takes place during a summer solstice so it is shot in constant sunlight with hardly any dark scenes. Hereditary was a mix of daytime and nighttime, but the majority of the movie took place at night which upped the scare factor for me. Not being able to see exactly what is going on, like ghosts and demons lurking in the shadows, makes movies a thousand times worse for me. But for the most part, I powered through the movie and tried my best to not look away. It was on the incredibly gory scenes that I found myself wincing and closing my eyes at.

(SPOILER ALERT!) The one particular scene that made me cringe and look away for was the scene where Charlie gets her head taken clean off by a pole. Not only was the accident itself very graphic, but they made sure to show every second, which is an Ari Aster specialty, he loves the gore! Right after Peter, the older brother causes the accident, he is so in shock that he drives home with her body still in the back seat and just goes to bed without saying anything or doing anything else.

The actors in this movie were phenomenal at showing raw emotion. Alex Wolff, who played Peter, played a teen severely depressed living with the guilt of killing his own sister extraordinarily. The mom, played by Toni Collette, really brought to life her neurotic character who did insane things to help her cope with loss.

This movie is full of cults, spirits, omens and death and all in all, I liked this horror movie enough to watch it again. I didn’t find myself having the keep every single light on in the house feeling that I normally get with other scary movies. I would give it eight ghosts out of ten ghosts for sure!

👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻(8)/10