Sightlines · reception
How Hereditary was received
2018 · Ari Aster · Hereditary on Sightlines
The arc
Premiered at Sundance 2018 to 'scariest film in decades' hype, then famously got a D+ CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences who expected a conventional scare machine. Eight years on it's settled comfortably into the modern horror canon — the audience caught up to the critics.
What’s debated
The eternal fight: is this a genuinely terrifying masterpiece or the poster child for slow, self-serious 'elevated horror' that isn't actually scary — with Toni Collette's Oscar snub as the permanent side-discourse.
Its footprint
Toni Collette's dinner-table eruption ('I am your mother!') is endlessly quoted and memed, and Charlie's tongue-click became a sound cue people genuinely can't hear anymore without flinching. It's the default reference point whenever anyone announces 'the scariest film since Hereditary.'
Where it stands
A Letterboxd-era essential — the A24 horror flagship that turned 'elevated horror' from a niche argument into everyone's argument.
Did you know? Despite rapturous reviews, opening-night audiences gave it a D+ CinemaScore — and it still became A24's highest-grossing film worldwide, a record it held until Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).
Named by the director
- Rosemary's Baby (1968) — Aster repeatedly cited it as a model for horror rooted in domestic paranoia and a slow-closing conspiracy.
- Don't Look Now (1973) — Aster named Roeg's grief-soaked thriller as a key touchstone for a family unraveling after loss.
- Ordinary People (1980) — Aster said he pitched Hereditary as a serious family drama in this mold that 'curdles into a nightmare.'
- Ingmar Bergman — Aster cited Bergman's anguished domestic chamber dramas as an influence on the film's emotional register.