Inside ‘Hereditary’, the scariest movie of this year

'Hereditary' stars Australian actress Toni Collette as the daughter of a woman whose death unravels terrifying secrets about their family ancestry. Photo: GSC Movies

The first thing writer-director Ari Aster felt after Hereditary’s midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival was relief that people didn’t hate it. Then headlines started popping up in the early hours of the morning declaring that the film had restored faith in the genre, that it was the most traumatically terrifying horror movie in ages, and that star Toni Collette should even get an Oscar nomination. The relief quickly turned to gratitude.

While film festival exaggeration is often real, Hereditary (out nationwide Thursday) is living up to the hype.