a review of 遗传厄运

I anticipated watching Hereditary for a few months, having seen a lot of high ratings. The risk of eagerly looking forward to a much-praised movie is that your expectations might become too high, so I tried to remain aware of that. On the night I saw Hereditary there was a thunderstorm outside, casting lightning flashes into our dark living room. I couldn't have asked for a better atmosphere. I liked the tension that's present throughout Hereditary, an effective blend of gloomy cinematography, a good sense of timing and build-up, and a disturbing soundtrack. There were some really goosebumps-inducing scenes, such as the deceased mother standing in a dark corner of a room, staring at her daughter. That's the kind of creepy ghost matter that always freaked me out when I was a youngster. And it still works to a certain extent, but as a seasoned horror viewer there are also a number of gimmicks that just don't work anymore, such as floating people and people crawling on ceilings. Hereditary features elements seen before in horror films like The Ring, The Grudge, The Babadook, It Follows, Sinister, The Sixth Sense, Carrie, Rosemary's Baby and The Shining. For example, Stanley Kubrick's brilliant The Shining was the first film I know that extensively uses symmetry for estranging shots. The final scenes of Hereditary left me with an ambivalent feeling. I liked the madness and surrealism, almost like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch or Francisco Goya painting, but it balanced on the edge of ridiculousness, which partly toned down the ending's impact on me. It also bothers me that amongst all the hideous, violent bloodshed, a naked old man is still required to cover his penis with his hands, because showing genitals would be more shocking than decapitation, rotting corpses and people burning alive? I'll never get used to Hollywood's hypocritical standards. All in all, I think Hereditary is one of the better supernatural horror films of the past years, but it didn't impress me as much as I hoped. I guess I've become a bit immune to cinematically induced anxiety.