Over the last few years, A24 has established itself as one of the top studios for experimental horror with critically-adored scarers like Under the Skin, Ex-Machina, The Witch, The Monster, and It Comes at Night. But judging from the new trailer for the studio’s next movie, Hereditary, we haven’t seen anything yet.
The new film, which premiered to great acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, looks to produce the same level of unease that the previously-mentioned films all accomplish, while also managing to look far more terrifying than the mostly subtle scares observed in the above films. The film is, on the surface, a family drama about how one seemingly ordinary mother and her children deal with the death of her own mother. But there’s an awful lot of sinister weirdness lurking under the surface, as it turns out the deceased grandma was apparently into some strange occult stuff. Here’s the full synopsis:
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited. Making his feature debut, writer-director Ari Aster unleashes a nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.
The film’s trailer features a number of horror movie hallmarks — spooky sounds, a creepy kid, a sadistic doppelgänger — but they’re all presented in a way that makes them feel fresh, unique, and most of all, terrifying. After all, who isn’t horrified at the idea of finding out something truly disturbing about their family’s past? You can check out the trailer below:
The film isn’t set to be released in theaters until June 8, 2018, but it already has a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, meaning it should have no trouble generating buzz by the time summer rolls around.
