Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne

Directed by Ari Aster

Entertainment, in cinemas now

 

Annie is coming to terms with the death of her controlling mother, not realising that a greater evil will soon take grip on her grieving family.

It’s somewhat unfortunate that writer/director Ari Aster’s movie is arriving with such plaudits as ‘The Exorcist for its generation’ and other 10/10 reviews because that gives it a level of expectation that it would be nigh on impossible to achieve. It’s definitely a very different sort of horror to that churned out by the studios, and I’m not convinced that it’s actually the movie that audiences are expecting or wanting.

Any review of the movie is problematic because once you start citing its various references it’s pretty clear to readers where it’s heading. You can’t say it’s like Film X or Y because that reveals the ultimate sub-genre that it sits within, and really it’s best approached with as little foreknowledge as possible.

Toni Collette is great as the grieving daughter, spending her day making tiny dolls house style  artwork for galleries. Gabriel Byrne is a welcome sight back on our screens as the husband and there’s two remarkable performances by Milly Shapiro and Alex Wolff as siblings Charlie and Peter. They both have their work cut out for them, and Collette also spends a lot of the movie in a very highly strung state. Its closest cinema forebear is Darren Aronofsky’s mother! in as much as it feels ‘off’ from the outset; you know things aren’t right and you’re just waiting for things to unravel and all hell let loose.

The frights are not your standard jump scares, typically building up through sustained tension. That’s not to say that there aren’t shocks – there’s plenty – but they do feel earned rather than thrown in as cheap devices to get a shriek. At no point was I terrified, though there’s a couple of unnerving set pieces where the sense of dread is piled upon rather unsubtly. What stops it from being the horror classic – that some are unwisely hailing it as – is the fact that ultimately the story is nothing new. I also don’t buy the denouement, there’s still too much unexplained – not because it’s being mysterious, but because it doesn’t know – and there were actually titters of laughter by the audience at the end, not in a good way.

Verdict: Some excellent shocks and hysterical performances really aren’t enough compensation for an old story that’s been told better before. It gains points for initially wrong-footing you, but once you have its measure, it’s Horror 101, and the forced exposition just made me roll my eyes. 7/10

Nick Joy