Silence: The Resilience of Faith

Often tests of human resilience are tests we put on ourselves. We ask ourselves: ‘Do I have the energy to undertake this?’ ‘Do I have the ability to accomplish this?’ ‘Can I endure the resistance I face?’ and even sometimes ‘Is this act the right thing?’. However here is nothing more disheartening to our resilience than futility. The sense that you are doing everything right and still you are failing. That is the test that Father Sebastião Rodrigues faces in Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence and that it proves to be his breaking point speaks volumes about the relationship between Catholicism and suffering.

Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence follows two 17^th-Centruy Jesuit priests Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver). The two receive word that their mentor, Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), the man who first took their confession, has committed apostasy. He has performed Fumi-E, a practice by which suspected Christians are made to trample on the image of Christ. Reverend James Martin, who consulted on the film, wrote about the significance of the act in the Jesuit magazine America.

“A Jesuit’s entire life is centered on Jesus, whom he knows through the Gospels, through the sacraments, through his ministry and through his prayer, especially through his experience of the Spiritual Exercises, a series of extended meditations on the life of Christ…Expecting the Jesuits simply to throw that relationship aside—to apostatize—is wholly unrealistic.”

Indeed, the notion seems unrealistic to Rodrigues and Garupe, who are convinced that this news is merely a Japanese slander. To resolve this, they volunteer for a mission to Japan, to seek out the ‘Hidden Christians’ driven underground. They are to hide amongst them and provide spiritual guidance in secret and to seek the truth of Father Ferreira. It is a journey which tests the resilience of both Rodrigues’s faith and sheer will. He travels to a strange and foreign country, with no knowledge of its culture or language, a country where he will be put to death if he is discovered. He sees men tortured for the faith that he shares. He sees people he believed faithful spit and stomp on the image of Christ. He sees those that refuse given long and agonising deaths; crucified at sea, drowned or beheaded.

Like many who witness such horrors Rodrigues does begin to question his faith. At the beginning of the film we see his relationship with Christ transcend the missional into personal. When he prays, he sees the image of Christ before him; depicted by Scorsese using The Veil of Saint Veronica by 16^th Century artist El Greco. Yet in this foreign country which has rejected Christ, Rodrigues finds God to be silent. God has seemingly turned his back on those who suffer most for him. In spite the horrors he witnesses and the apparent absence of God in the face of them, Rodrigues’s faith remains resilient. When captured he vows to not abandon Christ, remaining convinced that the doctrine of Christianity is immutable:

“…we believe we brought you the truth, and the truth is universal…If a doctrine weren’t as true in Japan as it is in Portugal, we couldn’t call it the truth.”

Rodrigues’s conviction remains resilient not only in Christ but in the value of Christianity. It is not only his faith but the true faith. As earnest as Rodrigues’s intentions may be, he remains a Westerner who believes that his religion is the only religion. I mention this lest anyone feel that Scorsese is in any way portraying Rodrigues determination in an admirable light. Critics have, understandably, read Silence as a white saviour narrative. One in which we are asked to sympathise with the virginal Western priest who suffers horribly in his quest to enlighten a savage land. In this scene Scorsese exposes the arrogance of both Rodrigues and the Catholic Church. As a Catholic himself the director proves himself a sharp critic of its history.

It should come as no surprise that physical pain and threat of death do not convince Rodrigues to apostatise. From its very inception Catholicism has proved an inherently masochistic religion, founded in the name of a Saviour who suffered an agonising death for the redemption of man. Catholic saints Sabastian and Ignatius claimed to rejoice in suffering, believing it to be trials from God. Many of them participated in the mortification of the flesh through fasting and flagellation, a practise that was adopted by Lutherans and other Christian sects. Self-flagellation continued to be practised right through until the 1960s, allegedly by figures as recent as Pope John Paul II. But to the Christian there is no form of bodily sacrifice greater than martyrdom. To die for one’s belief is the ultimate demonstration of faith. In Christianity, those killed for spreading the Gospel are venerated and elevated to Sainthood.

During the time in which Silence is set Japan found itself with no shortage of Christian Martyrs. Since the arrival of Francis Xavier in 1549 the gospel of Christianity had spread slowly, but strongly. The presence of Jesuit priests was tolerated, possibly because of their ability to liaise between Japanese fuedel lords (known as daimyo) and Portuguese traders. By the time Toyotomi Hideyoshi assumed power in 1585 there were estimated to have been 130,000 converts in Japan including several daimyō. It made Japan easily the largest Christian community outside of Europe. Unfortunately, Hideyoshi viewed Christianity as a symbol of European colonisation and outlawed its practise, beginning with the execution of twenty-six Christians in 1597. These were the first martyrs in Japan and in 1862 Pope Pius IX canonized the missionaries and converts, formally recognising them as Saints.

 Throughout Silence Rodrigues romanticizes the notion of martyring himself to an almost psychotic degree. He views his journey into Japan as a mission from God and casts himself as its messianic figure. Likening himself to Christ and other persecuted Christians. On their arrival Garupe remarks on their decision to take the fallen Christian Kichijiro (Yōsuke Kubozuka) as their guide. “We ‘ve trusted that man with our lives.” He says with scepticism, to which Rodrigues replies; “Jesus trusted even worse.” When leading mass under the cover of night he likens himself to the earliest Christians, practising in catacombs under persecution from the Roman Empire. While on the run he stumbles, sick and exhausted, onto a pool and sees the face of Christ in his reflection. His messiah complex at its most blatant. So, when he finally is captured Rodrigues shows no fear of death. In fact he outright dares the Japanese to execute him so that his blood may be the seed of Christianity in Japan.

He is not killed though because Inquisitor Inoue knows the danger of a Christian Martyr. According to University of San Francisco Professor Antoni Ucerler; “[The Japanese] realized that the Christians were emboldened by this example of people dying for their faith…What would really break the Christian community?’ they thought. ‘Well, if we could get not only the Christians but also the Jesuits to renounce their own faith, then that would really demoralize the Christians.” That became their approach.” So, Inoue sets about getting Rodrigues to renounce, first by reasoning with him, bringing the highest figures of authority before Rodrigues to patiently explain that Christianity is of no use to Japan and that its continued existence presents a danger to Japanese society. In private he tries to civilly explain the connection between Christianity and the Christian nations which would try to destroy Japan. The, when the time for civility is over Inoue saps at Rodrigues’s will.

 Rodrigues is taken to the beach where his fellow Jesuit Garupe is marched to sea with a flock of apostatised Christians. Even though they have recanted they are taken out to the water and drowned, and Rodrigues is forced to watch as Garupe dies, desperately trying to save them. He sees people die, not for their faith but for the priest that led them. In Garupe he loses the closest allay he has had in this strange land and sees the consequences of refusing to apostatize. The weight of it drives Rodrigues mad and so when he is at his lowest moment Inoue takes him to see Ferreira.

Little is known of the real Cristóvão Ferreira, only that he was a Portuguese Catholic Priest who travelled to Japan in around 1609. He ministered in the country for over twenty years, under the watchful eye of the Tokugawa Shogunate which inherited much of Hideyoshi’s suspicions about Christianity. In 1633 Ferreira was captured and forced to endure five hours of Tsurushi or ‘The Pit’. A practise in which Christians are suspended upside-down in a five-foot deep hole, with an incision in their neck to allow the blood to drain slowly. It results in a long and painful death and after five hours Ferreira apostatised. He subsequently took a Japanese name and wife and wrote several books on natural law before his death.

 In Silence this fictional version of Ferreira is broken, but not by the torment he endures. Rather it is the realisation that the torment, the pain and labour was pointless.  The Japanese who ‘converted’ never fully understood the doctrine he preached. The language barrier caused them to distort the image of the Christian god into one that suited their culture. When Francis Xavier first landed in Japan, he used the term ‘Deus’, the Latin word for God to refer to Jesus Christ. The Japanese mistook this for ‘Dainichi’, their word for the Great Sun Buddha. While the Japanese believed Christianity to be a form of Sun worship, similar to their own Xavier in turn believe Dainichi to be a creator god analogous to Christ. While Xavier would discover his error and aggressively preach Deus as the word of God the Japanese distortion of Christianity had already begun. The depth of that distortion was enough to convince this Ferreira that the Japanese converts were not true Christians. 

“The Japanese cannot think of an existence beyond the realm of nature. For them nothing transcends the human. They can’t conceive of our idea of the Christian God.’

Silence is not subtle about Japan’s form of Christianity only being a distortion. When Rodrigues and Garupe first arrive in Japan they find the hidden Christians believing themselves guided by ‘Jiisima’, an obvious mistranslation of ‘Jesus’. When they baptise a Japanese infant, the parents believe that they will immediately enter paradise, not realising that it is the Christian afterlife, rather than part of the physical realm. A conversation between Rodrigues and his Interpreter (Asano Tadanobu) highlights this cultural divide. The Japanese worship the Buddha, a thing that they believe men can become. In the West they worship Christ, an aspect of God which descended to become a man. The film comes down to the point that this cultural divide is, for the most part, too great for East and West to cross. So, with the thought of innocent people suffering and dying, not for God but for his own stubbornness, Rodrigues apostatises.

You may then ask if his faith was resilient in the end. As mentioned, for one who has dedicated their life to Christ, it would be unthinkable to commit Fumi-E, to trample. But Rodrigues only tramples when he finally hears God’s voice granting him permission. The remainder of the film shows him living in captivity in Japan, forced to take a Japanese wife, to apostatise regularly and write vows of renunciation. He is said to never acknowledge the Christian God, by word of symbol, even until his dying day. Yet when his body is cremated, we see Rodrigues clutching a tiny wooden cross, a handmade gift from one of his Japanese disciples.

The question then is why does Rodrigues remain faithful, even when continuing his faith is a futile act? The Japanese can never truly be converted and attempting to maintain even their parody of Christianity brings swift punishment, as we see enacted on Kichijiro late in the film. This is because Rodrigues’s faith is no longer for the Japanese. In contrast to his egotistical defiance seen earlier his Christianity is something exclusively for him to take guidance from. He is not baptising infants or offering confession to sinners. He is not spreading a Western doctrine in a culture that has no interest or understanding of it. His faith is a personal one and in that form it can remain resilient to the end.

Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes plays out like 2/3rds of a great movie paired with 1/3rd of Steve Carrel's SNL skits. The plot revolves around Emma Stone as Billie Jean King, a 29-year-old tennis champion who becomes fed up with being offered paltry prize money roughly a tenth of what her male peers earn. Teaming up with editor Gladys Heldman, King establishes her own women-only tournament. Aiming to raise the profile of women's athletics and make the tennis more accessible to the general public King works tirelessly, at great risk to her career. Only becoming distracted when a flirtation with hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) awakens previously unknown feelings in her.

Meanwhile Carrell's Bobby Riggs is...doing other stuff. Namely getting kicked out by his wife after his gambling addiction ticks her off too many times. Seeing opportunity in King's noble cause, Bobby challenges her to an exhibition match to, in essence, prove men's tennis as superior. He treats the entire thing like a sideshow act; training in goofy costumes, posing nude and making attention-grabbing remarks.

Carrell gives it his best. As the Faris's previous film Little Miss Sunshine proved, the former SNL-star is a deft hand at balancing comedy with drama. In Riggs we see a man trying relentlessly to embody the hustler persona he's built for himself, forever struggling to conceal his deep melancholy. It's good stuff, it's just so much less interesting than King's storyline. Which is a shame because they're given roughly the same amount of screen time. As if there's some sort of parity between Riggs' huckster antics and King's cause. Instead the obviously richer, more emotive storyline is undercut in service of cheap jokes. Yes, all evidence suggests that this is accurate of Bobby Riggs' character but is it necessary?

The real story of Battle of the Sexes is one of the systemic sexism within professional tennis, the casual disregard for female players held by the male establishment. From the ease at which Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) offers meager tournament payouts for women champions to the condescension of real-life sports journalist Howard Coswell draping his arm around co-commentator Rosie Casals during a live broadcast. These are the meat and potatoes of the film while Riggs' antics are clearly the dessert. Having the two so drastically separated though does a disservice to such an otherwise rich story.

A Star is Born

A Star is Born is a classic story of a young ingenue and a veteran star who fall madly in love with each other. However, as the relationship leads the ingenue to greater and greater heights the veteran finds (and it is always a 'his') his career starting to diminish which only exacerbates his addiction and self-destructive behavior. While the 1937 original has inspired countless imitations it's also had three official remakes with the last two trading in Hollywood for the music industry. This version sees Bradley Cooper in the Kris Khristofferson role from 1976, in addition to also writing and directing the film. His ingenue comes in the form of Ally, an aspiring singer with a natural talent for song-writing, here played by Lady Gaga.

Previous adaptations have generally split the focus between its male and female leads either evenly or in favour of the leading lady. However here Cooper's drug-addled country rock star Jackson Maine takes centre stage, occupying the majority of screen time and serving as the audience POV. It's an interesting choice from a storytelling perspective though it's not helped by the fact that Jackson is such a thoroughly unlikable character. A typical hard-drinking, drug abusing rock star who stumbles through every interaction yet also feels the need to dominate every scene. That becomes a problem when it comes to Ally's career, if not their entire relationship.

What at first begins as a mutual appreciation of talent and personality quickly becomes a need for Jackson to elevate Ally, regardless of her feelings on the matter. While it's sweet in intent Jackson's method's boarder on obsessive. Having his assistant relentlessly stalk Ally until she agrees to attend his show whereby he pressures her to perform an unrehearsed duet in front of a ravenous crowd. Because this is a movie this obviously goes down a treat rather than the traumatic humiliation it has the potential to be. But if A Star is Born expects us to embrace a little cinematic magic then it's at painful odds with the first hours, grounded realistic tone. Even if that first hour is the most earnest believable and entertaining section of the film overall.

That it takes a full hour to just complete the first act should give some indication of the films structural problems. While the 1976 version has it's faults it at least spends considerable time showing Esther and John building a life with each other. Cooper's version though is in such a rush to run through it's story beats that everything about his and Ally's relationship post-first act feels hollow and empty. From Ally making his rural house feel like a home entirely off-screen to the casual decision to make Jack play backing guitar because suddenly he's a has-bean. None of it feels real or affecting or meaningful and by the end you're just waiting for the wrap-up.

Cooper's A Star is Born is a solid directorial debut but even as it's well aware of it's own legacy it's a shockingly mediocre version of a twelve note song that been playing on repeat for almost a century. With the sole distinction of perhaps having the best songs of any of its predecessors.

Suspira

Well, call me the outlier on this one. Maybe it's bias, maybe it's just having not seen the original (yes, I know bad cinephile) but Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is the real deal. A remake that doesn't try to imitate the 1977 giallo classic by Dario Argento but instead retell it's story with a fundamentally different style and tone. It's an approach which gives the film an intensity of it's own, undiminished by comparisons to its predecessors.

Guadagino both retains and leans into the original setting of 1977 Germany where former Mennonite Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) joins the Markos Dance Academy, a school specializing in interpretive dance and led by Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). When she arrive though Susie finds the school distraught at the disappearance of student Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), last seen visiting her psychiatrist Dr Klemperer (also played by Swinton under the psudonym Lutz Ebersdorf). As Susie rises through the ranks of Markos's dancers she finds herself closer and closer to the truth that drove Patricia away. Blanc and the other teachers at the school are witches and intend her Susie to be the subject of their approaching sabbath.

The relocation to Berlin, rich with its Bahaus-style architecture, compliments Guadagnino's heavily bleached colour scheme. Devoid of primary colours the film takes on an atmosphere of brutality that sharply punctuates scenes of injury and body horror. Meanwhile the chaos of living in a city literally divided by the Cold War reflects Guadagnino's magical realist approach to the atmosphere at the Markos Academy. The witchcraft at play is mysterious and violent but also understated, used in a purely practical, even mundane capacity. The witches themselves are slyly knowing figures but ones riddled by insecurity, frivolity and ego. Even the momentous act of appointing a leader is handled with the kind of simplistic routine one applies to writing a cleaning rota.

Into this mundanity comes Swinton's Blanc, one of the few characters to adopt a genuinely ethereal air. Swinton's weighty prescence gives the character a commanding air that stays with her even as she grows progressively more vulnerable. The counterweight to her performance is Susie, the innocent ingenue unaware of the power within her that only grows as the film proceeds. It's the kind of role that, after three Fifty Shades films, Dakota Johnson excels in. Imbuing Susie with a sense of uncanny awareness to her initial waifishness. It gives her a compelling screen presence that suitability masks the fact that her character is little more than a cipher for much of the film. A subject of the plot rather than a participant in.

Supporting turns are delivered by Moretz and Mia Goth (last seen playing much the same role in A Cure for Wellness). Goth's permanently wet pout gives a vulnerable edge to what is primarily an expeditionary role. Moretz on the other hand is delivering a much more tensile performance as Patricia. Filled with a manic energy and paranoia that her flimsy German accent does nothing to diminish. Indeed Patricia's ambiguous identity only reinforces her unstable and traumatised persona.

Guadagino makes a questionable choice in opening the film with Patricia raving about the school. As if to add a hint of psychological ambiguity to a story concerned with very real psychological threats. It feels shoehorned in to allow the inclusion of Dr Klemperer who's story and themes gel little with the main plot of the film. While it's a heartfelt performance and it allows the characters to articulate the plot it's hard to ignore the fact that Klemperer could have been lifted from the film entirely with little consequence.

Then again the qualities of Suspira have little to do with plot and more to do with atmosphere and performance. In that sense Guadagnino has delivered a thoroughly atmospheric experience. Filled with tension, intrigue, pain and horror Suspiria is a worthy successor to it's namesake and one of the best films of 2018. An experience like no other.

Salsa Shark's Back Slate: Enter the Dragon

One of the chief concerns of any film critic is always; Have I seen the essentials? Not just the classics or the tiresome '1000 Films to See Before You Die' but any film considered formative to the medium. With a keen enough mind,  pretty much any film has the potential to widen our understanding of cinema. And while film is a relatively young medium it's one that has produced more work that is possible for any individual to see (in fact due to poor preservation there are some films that are simply not possible for anyone to see). So inevitably we all have our blind-spots, our films to put on the back slate to get around to some time. I've accrued more than my fair share over the years; essential films taking up space on the DVD shelf or the Netflix queue. So from time to time I'm going to recount my experiences crossing these off the list in whatever way I happen to (though preferably on the cinema screen).

With the anniversary of Bruce Lee's death coming up Watershed hosted a screening off Enter The Dragon, complete with introduction from Timon Singh. It's a film that's been on my hit-list for some time but circumstances have just got in the way. Arguably the seminal film of the late Bruce Lee's career Enter the Dragon has permeated the pop culture, even if only for Lee's involvement.

With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see what a boost Lee's presence is to the film's legacy. Taken on it's own it's a fairly schlocky example of Kung fu-sploitation films that popped up during the 70s and 80s. It wastes time splitting the focus between multiple protagonists, none of whom possess Lee's charisma. The story is surprisingly bloated for what should be a simple martial arts tournament, layering multiple threads around not only Lee's character but also the supporting cast made-up primarily of Jim Kelly and John Saxon. Unfortunately the script never finds anything substantive for it's antagonist Han, leaving him with the one-note characterisation of a mere drug baron with a little Asian flair.

But then this is less a film about character and story and more about style and action and on that front the film 100% delivers. Lee is always a compelling screen presence and here his sense of calm as he approaches each new fight leaves you with a sense of confidence Even during the dialogue driven scenes he manages to invest pathos and even a little humour into the exchange. So much so that when it comes for him to throw down it feels like a shared victory as he takes out waves upon waves of bad guys.

The film's style definitely borrows more from the blaxsploitation genre than anything native to Chinese cinema. With Lalo Schifrin's score rich with elements of funk combined with Eastern string instruments. It's feels like the birth of its genre which speaks to much of the impact of Enter the Dragon. In the ends this is a film that is beloved as an artifact in the history of cinema. Not only as the Bruce Lee film but also the film that introduced the world to a rough, contemporary new version of martial arts film. One that aimed to break convention and define action cinema for decades to come.

The Tale

The Tale is that rare film that captures its subject matter so effectively that it entirely justifies putting a trigger warning up front. So for the benefit of those who may be sensitive to the subject this film does cover topic of grooming and child sexual abuse. While that might put some off I think it's important to note that it may be the best attempt to cover such material in a long time. In no small part due to the role of the film-maker behind it.

Said film-maker is Jennifer Fox, primarily a documentarian, who a few years ago underwent a reexamination of her childhood after her mother discovered a story she had written as a teenager. The story chronicled a summer she spent at riding camp under the keen tutelage of the glamorous and towering Mrs G. It would soon be revealed to Jennifer that Mrs G was engaged in an affair with Bill, the camp's riding instructor, an affair that they would bring the then thirteen-year-old into.

While much of the film is about romanticizing the past the film, sensibly, never tries to match the rose-tinted view Jennifer previously held towards her abusers. The Tale pulls no punches in the the grim kind of pressure placed on a young girl and the ugliness of her abuse. Event the scenes of Bill's attempts at 'courtship' are tainted with a strong sense of tension as you wait for the penny to drop. It's made clear from the start that Jennifer has tried to romanticize this, viewing Mrs G as a beautiful giant of a woman appropriately played by the 6ft 2in Elizabeth Debicki.

In effect Jennifer has rewritten this incident as an exciting, coming-of-age experience and only now, with the perspective of time can she see the abuse for what it really was. The creeping doubt that slowly consumes Laura Dern's performance as Jennifer is a subtle but powerful thing to watch. So much of her character is admirable; accomplished film-maker, respected educator, self-confident independent woman. And yet we are left to wonder how much of that came from this horrifying period in her life. After confronting both the event and her abusers we find Jennifer left, not broken, but certainly empty.

At it's core The Tale is a film about the unreliability of memory. About how our distorted view of the then influences our now. But does that mean the person we are now is any less real for being based on a falsehood? The answer is no. The forcibly mature 13-year-old Jennifer who sees herself as the hero of her tale is no less real than the shaken forty-something today.

It's the kind of perspective that could only come from having a director so close to the events of the film. Fox takes ownership of what happened even if she cannot bring her abusers to justice. All she can do is tell her story and she has done so powerfully.

Hereditary: An Frightening Lineage

Hereditary is one of those films that proves the ability of a talented director and cast to elevated a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed work. All the elements are in place for an atmospheric and gripping horror filled with sympathetic and complex characters. Everything except for the actual story which starts out from an interesting place but just can't quite bring itself to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately this means that any exploration of what's wrong with Hereditary means a discussion of events which occur late in the film. So if you want to go into the film as blind as possible then I would advise looking away now.

The plot of Hereditary focuses on miniatures artist Annie Graham as she attempts to process her mother's passing. Annie's mother, we are told, was a difficult and secretive woman who kept many friends and participated in activities that Annie was kept far away from. To compound the matter she showed an uncharacteristic affection for Annie's daughter Charlie, played by newcomer Milly Shapiro. Charlie is an awkward and vulnerable child who fears that now her grandmother is dead no one will be able to look after her. It a fear that is soon realized as tragedy continues to befall the Graham family, forcing Annie to try to communicate with ghosts in order to understand her grief. However by doing so finds herself falling deeper into a trap that her mother laid for her.

All of which comes together as really compelling, edge-of-your seat horror film stuff.The turns which this story take are really surprising and frightening and all the while you're heart is going out to this grieving mother and the family that is falling apart around her. But eventually the film reaches it's final act and feels the need to give all of these strange occurrences a very specific explanation that is neither satisfying or coherent. For one thing it falls into a lazy horror trope, for another it relies too much on contrivance and finally it just doesn't seem to have anything to do with what the film has presented itself as being about. From the start Hereditary is a film about Annie's grief over her mother and how that has led her to neglect her family to the point of self-destruction. But then to turn it around and say that this is all actually someone working behind the scenes. It just undermines what the rest of the film has been about.

The best horror films derive all their best moments from simple, but deep premises. A Quiet Place is about horror through silence, Get Out is about racial commodification, Drag Me to Hell is about being dragged to hell. But nothing in Hereditary is about what Annie is inheriting from her mother, she isn't a part of the conspiracy her mother is involved in, she doesn't even know about it until the very end. And once you start pulling at that thread the rest of the film starts to fall apart; the big scares and story points and especially the creepy iconography like the miniatures and the performances from Milly Shapiro and Alex Wolf as her older brother. These feel less like parts of a single, haunting idea and more like random elements thrown in to amp up the creep factor. It's a bit like the Annabel doll from The Conjuring, it has nothing to do with the rest of the film but it's creepy and iconic so why not throw it in. 

This isn't to say that the film is a total bust. I think Ari Aster is a really effective director of horror, his sense of suspense is the reason I was on my seat so much throughout the film. And he gives the film a very unique visual aesthetic with the melding of Annie's miniatures with physical scenery. It all adds to the creepy vibe even if, ultimately it doesn't amount to anything. I can totally see this guy going on the payroll at Universal if they ever try that Dark Universe again.

Toni Collette is also a big part of why this film works. I know 'barely-together mom' is pretty much her bread-and-butter but she always finds a new twist to take on it and this is no exception. Annie is a detached, career-focused mother and we haven't really seen that done with the more kooky artist type. She brings real believably to some of the bigger leaps of logic her character makes and more importantly she's someone you can invest in emotionally. When things start going wrong for her it's not just frightening it's outright heart-breaking. Like I said there's a lot that Hereditary has going for it. It's just massively let down by a stroy that could have done with a few passes through an experienced editor.