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Thursday, June 21, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
“Tag”
Quality 16
Warner Bros.
“Hereditary”
State Theatre
A24
FILM REVIEW
Horror is a genre that often
lends itself to formula — people
just aren’t that hard to scare.
The horror film typically oper-
ates under an unspoken con-
tract between the filmmakers
and their audience: You may
go see the most recent install-
ment of the “Scream,” “Hallow-
een” or “Saw” franchises and,
for about an hour and a half,
you’ll be treated to an adrena-
line rush courtesy of a collection
of tried and true horror tropes.
The film will fall into a familiar
rhythm, and the beats the story
hits will serve to both unnerve
the audience while maintaining
a healthy degree of separation.
And what does the filmmaker
gain from this contract? They
get to refine these types of films
to a science and pump out yearly
installments ad infinitum (2017’s
“Jigsaw,” for example, marked
the 8th installment in the block-
buster “Saw” franchise). It’s by
no means a slight against those
films, as they occupy their own
niche within the state of mod-
ern cinema; these films are sure
to entertain, shock and most
importantly, scare.
Ari Aster’s directorial debut
“Hereditary” is not one of those
films. It did not scare me — it
shook me to my core. The film
tells the story of the Graham
family, whose lives are turned
upside down when Ellen Gra-
ham, the family’s cold, ritualistic
matriarch, dies, leaving behind
boxes filled with secrets that
will haunt her grieving family. If
this sounds vague, that’s because
this film evades description. It
knowingly takes the aforemen-
tioned agreement between film-
maker and audience and tears it
to shreds, following no familiar
rhythm and actively subverting
classic horror tropes. The result
is a visceral, disturbing film that
will stay with audiences long
after the credits roll.
While the film provides gore
and shocking images abound,
Aster’s true strength lies in his
ability to make familiar things
seem
unspeakably
terrifying.
Toni Collette (“Please Stand By”)
delivers a truly earthshaking
performance as Annie, Ellen’s
grief-stricken daughter and a
mother of two. In one particular-
ly unsettling dinner table scene,
Collette shows her acting chops
as she jolts between overwhelm-
ing grief and blinding, animal-
istic rage. Her unhinged, manic
face, outlined by the dim flicker
of candlelight, is one of the film’s
most unnerving images.
The film is further bolstered
from an impressive display of
cinematic ingenuity from Aster,
who proves himself as an impor-
tant new name not just within
the horror genre, but for film as
a whole. In almost every regard,
from soundtrack to cinematog-
raphy, “Hereditary” manages to
impress with its inventiveness.
One of Aster’s greatest triumphs
is how well he understands the
power of the viewer’s imagina-
tion, often demonstrating an
uncanny ability to decide what
to show the audience and what
to keep hidden. While Aster does
eventually show the audience
many of these truly gruesome
and disturbing images, he mas-
terfully builds suspense leading
up to it.
For all its disturbing imagery
and terror-inducing moments,
perhaps the scariest part of the
film is that at its core, the true
“monster” of the film is some-
thing decidedly real. Much like
2014’s “The Babadook,” which
used the image of an eight-foot
tall man-creature stalking a
woman and her son as an analog
for grief and despair, “Heredi-
tary” makes similar symbolic
overtures. Even when the film
does stretch its legs and reach
into
more
outlandish
terri-
tory, the center of what makes
it so profoundly upsetting feels
decidedly real, leaving the audi-
ence with the creeping fear that
maybe this could happen to
them. Maybe the apple doesn’t
fall far from the tree, and maybe
— no matter how much we may
struggle — we can’t ever escape
what we inherit.
‘Hereditary’ contemplates
inherited trauma and pain
FILM REVIEW
A24
MAX MICHALSKY
Daily Arts Writer
JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer
There’s not much to “Tag” that
you won’t get out of most big-
budget comedies. The cast is almost
unanimously made up of names
you’ll recognize from their previous
work, and you’ll leave the theater
feeling like at least one of your
favorites was shafted for screen
time.
At least a full quarter of the jokes
will feel like a bad improvisation
that goes on way too long and mostly
consists of two or more characters
trying to talk nonsense over each
other. There will be a Big Emotional
Moment that comes out of nowhere
about ten minutes from the end
of the movie, when the writers
realized they couldn’t just have the
characters play tag the whole time.
“Tag” ticks all these boxes and
more, but when it dabbles in cliché,
it does so with such gusto and such
commitment to the insanity of its
premise that it’s really hard not to
like.
Unlike similar comedies like
“Daddy’s Home 2” or “The House,”
there’s an understanding here
that just putting funny people on
camera together doesn’t naturally
generate comedy. The cast of “Tag”
is actually given ample opportunity
to show off their well-established
comic chops — Jake Johnson (TV’s
“New Girl”) as a stoner, Jon Hamm
(“Beirut”) as an uber-charismatic
doofus,
Ed
Helms
(“Father
Figures”) as the biggest man-child
in a group of man-children — and
almost everyone gets a laugh.
The stand-out doesn’t even wind
up being one of the leads; it’s Isla
Fisher (“Nocturnal Animals”) as
Anna, the wife of Hoagie (Helms)
who harbors an unhealthy obsession
with the game. Fisher’s talents have
been unused for too long, and her
ability to shift between different
personas at a moment’s notice is
put to good use here. In one scene
she’s shocked that she forgot to
show off vacation photos of her kids
to a visiting reporter. Soon after,
she tries to waterboard
Thomas Middleditch (TV’s “Silicon
Valley”) so her husband can tag
Jeremy Renner (“Wind River”). It’s
ridiculous and absolutely hilarious.
Other members of the cast don’t
acquit themselves as well, usually
due to a lack of screen time as
opposed to any fault of their own.
Rashida Jones (TV’s “Parks and
Recreation”) has proven herself
a terrific straight man in the past
but isn’t given the chance to do
anything in “Tag” but participate in
a tired love triangle with Johnson
and Hamm. And Annabelle Wallis
(“The Mummy”) is mostly an
audience surrogate who sticks to
the background, though it would
have been nice to see her get in on
the action a bit more.
Then there’s Renner as Jerry:
the crux on which the whole movie
turns and who ultimately feels like
he’s in a different movie. Since most
of the movie consists of him running
away from the rest of the cast, he’s
the odd man out, the one who never
really feels like “part of the group.”
This is almost certainly part of the
point, that Jerry has grown farther
from his friends mentally as he has
physically in the game, but where
we understand the relationships
between the other characters due to
their shared screen time, we never
get the same insight into Renner,
so the Big Emotional Moment that
ensues with his character late in the
movie falls comparatively flat.
The upside to this is that at no
point does “Tag” treat Renner’s
character like he is bound by the laws
of physics and logic, which allows
for unexpected, overblown action in
a movie based on a children’s game.
It’s drenched in slow motion and
accompanied by Renner’s smirking
voice over. In a time when most
comedies don’t allow themselves to
lean into their ludicrous premise,
watching “Tag” step up and own its
insanity is pretty refreshing.
‘Tag’ disappoints
WARNER BROS.