There's no stopping A24, its ascension as distributor and studio one of the last decade's biggest success stories. Just this month, Civil War marked their most successful opening weekend, even expanding to IMAX. Speaking of those giant screens, A24 has been re-releasing some of their greatest hits in the format, starting with Ex Machina back on March 27th. Uncut Gems is coming May 22nd, while April's selection hits theaters tomorrow, beckoning audiences to relieve a movie nightmare like none other. It's Hereditary, Ari Aster's promising debut and one of the few theatrical experiences that caused me sleepless nights. Believe me, when you watch as many horror flicks as I do, that's rather special…
After so much violence at 24 frames per second, gore, guts, ghouls, and the whole shebang, one begins to feel desensitized to cinematic horror. Yet, there are those pictures that manage to surprise, tickling your unconscious in just the proper manner to summon interior demons to the psyche's forefront. That's what happened to me with Hereditary in 2018, though some of that affliction was undoubtedly a product of my state of mind. You see, the night before that press screening, I almost choked to death. I can still remember the animal panic taking over, as my vision turned blurry and I felt myself more alone than ever before.
On the threshold of fainting, my desperate motions alerted other people in the house to what was happening, and I was eventually saved. Still, it was quite the traumatic event. Imagine my surprise when, the morning after, I was seated before a screen where another person gasped for air, their eyes shining with the kind of terror one senses when the end is in sight. The kind of terror I had just savored a few hours ago. Watching little Milly Shapiro pantomime an anaphylactic shock, I was reminded of it but my mind wandered further. Suddenly, I was back in primary school, gasping for breath after a class sojourn into the local pool.
In those days, my undiagnosed asthma reacted poorly to an environment where chlorinated water came into contact with an overbearing AC system, causing me a respiratory crisis every time I tried to join my classmates. It got so bad to the point I had to be taken to the hospital, and that feeling of air running out on the back of a moving vehicle stayed with me. It's not so much the lack of oxygen that terrifies, but the constricting throat that keeps the carbon dioxide in, like a mighty pressure on your upper body and a torrent of dizziness to make matters worse. Through Hereditary's summoning, it all came back to me, a Proustian moment that switched the nostalgia of a madeleine for a living hell.
All that said, I think it was the dynamic between brother and sister that got to me most. After all, I've been that kid made to uncomfortably follow an older sibling to a party I wasn't invited to and where I wasn't welcome. I've also been the brother to a little sister, stressing over the responsibility imposed by parental pressure, both annoyed and fearful, exasperated and impossibly concerned. Remember the moment after the unimaginable happens in Hereditary, when the camera stays on an older brother's face. The gesture forces the viewer to confront the guilt and sheer horror, marinate in a moment nobody's ready for and, perchance, imagine themselves in the same place. I know I did.
If not in the cinema, it happened later, as Alex Wolff's catatonia stayed with me and Toni Collette's motherly cries echoed in my ear. Most of all, the image of a broken, detached head on the side of the road tormented the waking mind. When sleep did come, the head reappeared, its unseeing eyes staring right at me while ants covered the flesh in busy infestation. Only it was no longer Shapiro's visage I saw. Instead, it was my younger sister who stared with dead eyes. That nightmare reoccurred plenty of times, a curse that was equal parts burden and odd wonderment. After all, if you love to be terrified by the screen, there's a weird pleasure in finding such things following you beyond the cinema, an evil spirit haunting the land of dreams.
Have you had similar experiences? Please share what movies gave you nightmares in the comments.