Everyone was talking about this movie at one point. Right when it came out people were raving about how good it was, which made me want to see it even more than I did because well, it's a horror movie and that's what I do, I watch horror movies. Because so many people liked this one it meant I had to run away screaming from any conversation that might contain spoilers (spoilers ate the worst, and everyone who likes a movie has to blab about why they liked the movie so much, and don't even get me started on how trailers have to spoil every single part of the movie nowadays) but I managed to remain spoiler-free, and I finally get to watch this movie today, so I'm excited to see what I think.
When the matriarch of the Graham family dies, her children and grandchildren gather for her funeral and to take care of her estate. Soon they begin to uncover mysterious ans horrifying clues about their inheritance. These clues stack up until they become more and more terrifying, and her family must soon find a way to escape the deadly curse they have inherited. Will they be able to free themselves in time or will they succumb to their terrifying ancestry?
Toni Colette is in this movie, and I really love her, so that was one reason why I was so excited to see this movie. She is great as the grieving daughter who had a complicated relationship with her mother and a history of mental illness in her family. Alex Wolff who plays her teenage son and Milly Shapiro who plays her thirteen year old daughter do a great job with their roles too. They really seemed like an older brother and his annoying kid sister. I feel bad for her husband, played by Gabriel Byrne, because he has to carry the weight of all his grief alone and the rest of his family kind of circle around him, never really connecting with him and his wife pulls away from him in her grief. Seeing them sit and try to eat dinner in silence while tension swirls around them is really heartbreaking. Hearing them scream at each other is heartbreaking too. Wow.
So I was watching this movie for over an hour wondering when it was going to turn into a horror movie. I mean it was a great movie and very impactful, but it wasn't a horror movie yet in my mind, and I actually got very anxious about what might be about to happen around the corner lurking in the dark corners of the movie when it finally decided to unveil the horror. Then slowly, but surely, it crept in on tippy toes, and before I knew it, I was watching a horror movie. It's very clever how it slowly shifts from family drama to ghost story to all out balls to the wall horror movie, but somehow it does, and it keeps throwing twists at us right up until the end. I even watched the end credits all the way through because I didn't trust the movie not to throw one more twist at me after it ended. I haven't done that at a movie since "They Look Like People," and y'all remember how much I loved that movie. I'm not going to spoil anything about this movie, just recommended that you watch it (preferably alone on a dark, cold, rainy night out in the boonies like I did, natch).
No comments:
Post a Comment