"Hereditary" may be the most successful thriller film expressing "desperation" in recent years. How can you see it? Horror movies and thriller movies are essentially different in terms of meaning. The former focuses on sensory stimulation, using scary sounds and pictures to suddenly appear to frighten people; while the latter focuses on psychological stimulation, with more techniques and emphasis on progressive , the purpose is to make people feel panic and fear. "Hereditary" is a classic thriller, and rightly needs to rely on more and more complex techniques to win. So how exactly can despair be created more effectively?
The core is already old-fashioned. Many classic thriller movies have tried to create a stronger sense of panic and helplessness by deliberately weakening the initiative of the main character, and "Hereditary Doom" is no worse than this. Several obvious lens language can be proved: the frequent use of miniatures to guide scene transitions in the process of filming in and out of the picture, the extensive tracking/snooper's perspective, and the use of light-on-off effects to express the alternation of day and night, etc. Wait. The purpose is to create a feeling of artificial and secret manipulation, that is, the direction of the story, and everything that will happen next, the initiative is in the hands of the so-called cultists (unknown forces) in the film, not in the main character. This deliberately isolates the protagonist's power to control and change the plot, but at the same time does not abandon the protagonist's probing power to promote the development of the plot. Going with the flow, even if you try your best, you can't do anything, and a sense of despair naturally forms.
Of course this is not enough. Audiences who have finished watching the plot can fully understand that the protagonist of the film, mother Annie, is constantly being divided. This is different from the reversal dramas that we usually see with split personality as the theme. From the point of view of the plot, in fact, many clues have long been shown, that is, Annie herself is also fascinated by her own mother Ellen's conjuring. She is not ignorant, and even an important participant. Annie knew that the death of her father and her brother was related to her mother Ellen's "mental illness". The brother said, "Mom wants to stuff people into my body", which proves that Ellen had done it long before Annie was a mother. Tried, but failed, and Annie wanted to have a miscarriage many times, and tried to avoid Ellen, all out of motherly love to protect her child. It is reasonable to speculate that Annie was split because of the coercion from her mother and her unwillingness to desecrate her motherhood. She ultimately chose her own child and removed that part of her mother Ellen's control from her mind. Unfortunately it didn't work. Annie's sleepwalking is a reaction to being controlled by cultists. It is conceivable that those incomprehensible supernatural events, such as why Ellen's headless corpse was dug out of the grave and appeared in the attic, must be caused by Annie who was sleepwalking. , As for the final soul-calling ceremony of the film, Annie was finally completely controlled, and she also knelt at Paimon's feet together, becoming a vital sacrificer, which was her sad final destination.
What is success? There are countless thriller movies in which the main character eventually degenerates, and it is much rarer to use the helpless main character as the starting point throughout the whole process, and it is much rarer to show it as a complete chess piece until the end. To put it bluntly, the film uses the image of the protagonist's powerlessness and despair as a bait to weaken his power, giving the illusion that he has no power to fight back against the pressure of the plot, and in the end, he simply needs even this little power. Stripped clean, all the efforts the protagonist has made all the time are precisely to fuel the flames of the evil side, and this has reached the deepest level of despair.
"Hereditary Doom" may not be a genius work, and its story core can be said to be quite weak. In similar stories, it may not be as good as Wen Ziren's version of "The Conjuring". But it does have enough novel and unique genius. Just like "A Quiet Place", which is also one of the successful thriller films this year, a simple background setting can make the atmosphere of the whole film extremely fine, all of which are It proves that the potential of thriller movies is being discovered. Although the thriller movies that once failed to take the stage still have a long way to go, they will definitely get better and better. It also gives me reason to believe that the more successful thriller movies will be. It will be endless, and I would like to wait and see.
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