With recent films like IT, Get Out, The Witch and The Babadook all picking up critical acclaim as well as busting the box office wide open, we’re living in a new golden age of horror cinema. Now, it’s looking as if the next high-profile chiller is set to be A24’s Hereditary, which has been picking up some major buzz at the Sundance Film Festival, where critics are calling it “the scariest horror movie in years.”
Directed by Ari Aster and starring Toni Colette and Gabriel Byrne, the film follows the Graham family as they deal with the death of their grandmother, Ellen. Her death kicks off a process through which they learn about their family history, which contains some truly grisly and terrifying secrets. To their horror, they realize their grandmother’s inheritance is something horrible… something that might well be inescapable.
The producers bill the film as so:
A nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.”
Critics have been quick to load it with praise, with The Verge saying that it’s “pants-wettingly scary,” Thrillist revealing that “the screams in the theatre were almost as frightening as what was on screen,” USA Today calling it “the most insane horror movie in years…” and Vanity Fair‘s critic claiming they were “entirely relieved that I’d made it through.”
Frankly, this sounds completely awesome, and there’s already talk that Toni Colette could be in contention for a 2019 Oscar for her work in the pic. Furthermore, buoyed up by this buzz, A24 have just announced that Hereditary is set to be released on June 8th, so you’ll be able to check it out quite soon!