Hereditary

I like a good scary movie and it's been a long time since I've seen one that really scared me. So I went to see Hereditary with high hopes for horror. It got good reviews, it has good actors (Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne), so I figured it'd be a slam dunk, right? Wrong! For a movie that started great, it sure went off the rails, mainly in the last fifteen minutes. People being decapitated, setting others on fire, decomposing bodies, an overabundance of flies (Amityville?) all got a seat at the table in Hereditary. Are we still doing devil cult movies? Didn't that trend end in the 70's with Rosemary's Baby, the Wicker Man, etc.? Apparently not. When a modern movie throws in a devil/cult story line, I feel like that's just lazy writing. I watched a movie on TV not long ago from the 70's called (no surprise) Race with the Devil with Peter Fonda and Loretta Swit. The plot of that film was that two couples stumbled across a devil worship ceremony while they were driving across the country in an RV. Then the cult tries to kill them. I thought about that movie while I was watching Hereditary because, once again, devil worshipers were back on the big screen reeking havoc. I also thought at a movie from a few years ago called The Witch. Another horror movie that had good reviews but was a disappointment to me. (Spoiler alert: the goat did it!) Come on, Hollywood. You can do better!