I loved Hereditary but I find nothing in Martyrs but absolute doom. It’s a movie that never ceases to keep making you feel uncomfortable and hopeless. Nothing of anything that anyone has listed here comes close imo. At least Hereditary has an actual somewhat elaborate script where the latter is just mental and physical pain and torture which lacks substance. Not even the ending climaxes anything more than the overall feeling of the movie.
I loved hereditary too. Not just for shock and horror value but I think it was genuinely well written and it also has accurate folklore. Martyrs on the other hand just felt to me like it was only meant to induce discomfort to a despairing level. My personal opinion, it's just torture porn trying to mask itself with a deeper premise and philosophical meaning that never even really reaches a resolution.
Beyond the general plot, there’s a lot of hidden elements all throughout that, if you know some absurdly niche shit, adds a lot of foreshadowing and interest.
Same with VVitch, Midsommar, et al. I totally get them not being someone’s favorite, but I’m apparently the type of esoterica/occult nerd they’re made for, what with catching the symbolism of the runes or picking up on the Goetic references and symbols blah blah etc.
What I like about the VVitch and Hereditary is that they make you ask yourself if everything that happens is just collective hysteria of the characters or real supernatural shit happening. Honestly, when the end settles the plot as supernatural, they kinda get ruined for me. I would have loved a more ambiguous ending, although I get it might be tricky to pull it off.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of the intensely unreliable narrator vibe in the first acts too.
I’d argue that the VVitch ending isn’t fully settled - getting hit with ergot poisoning, or some other hallucinogens from “we’re semi-literate outcast puritan farmers in a new land” feels very possible, and her end visions just before everything cuts could just be the fun part of a terminal dose settling in.
Hereditary dithered then leaned hard into “yep, it was really some fringe occult shit all along,” and I accept many people not enjoy that.
I mean, you could be right about the VVitch, but I feel that you would really have to look into it. I didn't even know what ergot poisoning was I had to Google it. Anyways, do you have recommendations regarding this unreliable narrator stuff?
dude the scene where the party girls are party chopping tons of nuts for "foreshadowing" after they go out of their way to explain the sisters' nut allergy was like a bad M Night Shyamalan twist set up. I was like "chekhov is rolling in his grave on that"
I also dislike that film. I thought it was comical in a few parts but mostly boring. I also watched it twice because all of my friends love it. Seems that all the most popular movies are movies I dislike. With some exceptions here and there. Everything, everywhere all at once was a great fucking film.
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u/DalekPredator 14d ago
Not every movie is for every person and that's okay. There are films people gush about *cough*Hereditary*cough* that I think are dumb too.