Na Alex Garlands Ex Machina, Robert Eggers’ The Witch en Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight heeft A24 ook Ari Asters Hereditary-script in boekvorm gegoten met een voorwoord van Bong Joon Ho.

Wat Bong betreft, is Hereditary een onberispelijke horrorfilm, maar zijn de occulte elementen een dekmantel voor de echte horror, namelijk het gezin waar de film om draait.

“Ari Aster overstijgt de kenmerken van het genre en levert een echte en diepgaande horrorfilm af,” schrijft Bong die Aster opnam in zijn lijstje van twintig regisseurs die volgens hem de toekomst van cinema zullen bepalen.

Lees het volledige voorwoord hieronder:

He’s facing forward in the driver seat, completely frozen. He can’t bear to look back. In the backseat is his sister Charlie’s BODY, covered in thick, tar-like blood. Only the body. No head. If he looks up ever so slightly, he will be able to see her through the rearview mirror.  So he can’t even move his eyes. Eventually, he gets out of the car without looking at all. Once dawn breaks, he will hear his mother’s scream.

Even more terrifying than the decapitated girl in the backseat is the fact that we, as an audience, may have — subconsciously — hoped for Charlie’s death. Of course this is not the film’s ‘official’ stance — to root for a child’s death. But when Charlie makes annoying sounds with her tongue, or when she cuts the head off a dead pigeon, the movie is undoubtedly sending signals that fill us with sinister thoughts.

While the film is an impeccable work of genre in which occult elements are cleverly, tightly woven together, I wonder if genre is just a cover for the real horror. Because the true horror comes from the family itself. One of the most terrifying scenes in the film is the dimly lit dinner scene, which has no occult elements and relies solely on Toni Collette’s explosive performance. The film is ostensibly about the hell that a family suffers as generation after generation is swallowed by a demon, but it’s actually saying that family itself (or ties defined by blood) is hell.

In ‘Hereditary,’ Ari Aster goes beyond the trappings of genre and delivers true, profound horror. A horror that is primal and inescapable. In order to survive this overwhelming horror, we cast a spell on ourselves. We hope that the gruesome moments we witnessed will eventually settle into a “neutral view of the accident,” like an innocuous tableau made up of adorable miniature figures.

Bron: IndieWire