2h 7m
Director: Ari Aster

This film kicks off at a funeral. It centres around a family who had a crone at it's head (in Wicca, the three stages of womanhood are maiden, mother and crone - crone in this context means wise elder). The crone has died. Her family were seemingly unaware of her spiritual inclinations. The youngest daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) was her favourite grand child.

Charlie has a tongue clap tick which you hear her do throughout the film, it's like the sound of a clock ticking or chinese water torture and it is just one element of many devices used to put the audience on edge.

At a party with her brother, Charlie eats some cake which contains nuts and suffers from Chekov's anaphylactic shock (a seed planted in the funeral scene). The ensuing panic leads her brother to drive maniacally towards home. There is an unexpected decapitation when he swerves to avoid an object in the road and his sister has her head sticking out of the window.

Annie likes to build miniatures and one of the coping strategies for her daughters' death is to build a recreation of the car scene complete with disembodied head.

This film collapses into a discussion about how a family might deal with such a horrendous tragedy and as you can imagine, it's quite traumatic. Annie has a history of sleepwalking herself into slightly psychotic situations which adds another element of fear.

It's very well edited (and directed) with manic sections being followed by longer, more contemplative shots which give the audience time to breathe and take in the view as it were. A lot of movie tropes are very well executed here but they always feel appropriate and not just a gratuitous emptying of the trick bag.

The soundtrack by Colin Stetson and Rob Kleine is very moody and tense throughout and really helps ramp up the stress factor.

Personally, I find this film very disturbing. If you're like me then some of the scenes will echo in your mind a long time after seeing it. As this is only rated 15 and I've seen much more horrific films, I think it's a perfect example of how film can be more about what you feel than what you see.

You know that thing when someone hypes you up about a thing and then you experience it and it wasn't quite what you imagined? I remember my Mum did that to me once and made me hide behind the sofa during the diving exploration scene in Jaws, I later saw the gory bit and was suitably unimpressed by how shocked I wasn't. I hope I'm not doing that to you here!

A lot of the horror in this flick comes from empathising with the roles of the characters. How would a mother feel for example, if her daughter was decapitated in an accident? I'm glad you asked because they brush with that reality here and Toni Collette has the chops to really sell it!

If you haven't seen it, prepare to be creeped out (and traumatised!). A good one for the Halloween season!



Trailer: