Away Off

I'm pausing in the Seattle trip stories for a day to write about something we did after we'd returned. The touring production of the Broadway musical Come From Away was in Denver, and we headed down to the Buell Theater on the day after Thanksgiving to catch it.

While Dear Evan Hansen got all the love from the Tonys last year (and deservedly so), it was Come From Away that won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical (along with prizes from many other critics groups). It's the story of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, a small town whose location near the easternmost edge of Canada made it an epicenter of activity in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Flights inbound from Europe were diverted to Gander, almost doubling its effective population in a day and testing the locals in endless ways as they bent over backwards to roll out the welcome mat to a bunch of "come from aways" suddenly stranded with little or nothing.

It's great material for drama. The musical employs a cast of 12 to portray many dozens of characters, locals and travelers, depicting the days before air travel in the U.S. was restored. It's a heartwarming story of unsung heroes and humanity. (The ironies of calling them "unsung" when their story has become a hit musical are not lost on me.) You might expect a heavy, depressing night at the theater, but there's actually a lot of humor in Come From Away (perhaps even too much?), and though the show plays without intermission, it moves along at a brisk pace.

But there's a lot about the musical that left me uncertain at best, if not disappointed. Foremost, the story isn't actually "dramatized" particularly well. The script was purportedly written after its creators, Irene Sankoff and David Hein, heard of the story and traveled to Gander themselves for the 10th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. They interviewed many locals, and many travelers who returned for a reunion, piecing their stories together.

If this sounds like the way you'd make a documentary, then you won't be surprised at the results. I would estimate that more of the lines in Come From Away are delivered in asides ("interviews") directly to the audience than in dialogue with other characters. Characters frequently just come out and tell us how they're feeling instead of showing it through actions. The patter is rapid fire, with narrating characters weaving in and out of one another, exactly the way an editor would mix interview footage in a documentary film. On a screen, this method works -- partly for lack of alternatives when you have no footage of actual events, partly because you can get right up close and personal with the people telling their stories. On stage, the artifice of all this looms large.

The music of Come From Away was another sticking point for me. It's a cliche to walk out of a musical humming one of its songs, but it's true that when you can't do that, the musical is dangerously forgettable. That's the case here. Also, it's old-fashioned music in a few ways. The five-piece band is a traditional Irish folk ensemble, so all the music feels old-timey and strangely out-of-place. (Is Newfoundland populated mostly with Irish immigrants? Not that I knew, and not that I easily found online.) There are also very few solos in the show. Nearly all the numbers are elaborate chorus productions with loads of characters, somewhat impersonal and very much of the style I associate with Broadway shows from decades past.

There are a few moments of drama and emotion that do land well, and they're the moments where the show truly does get personal with just one or two characters. A subplot tracking the relationship between a gay couple has a meaningful resolution. The closest thing to a "show-stopping number" is the one true uninterrupted solo that comes near the end, when an airline pilot character sings her personal journey: what flying means to her, and how this experience has changed her. It's a truly powerful moment in the show, packing quite an emotional punch.

I gather all this works better for some than others. There are plenty of positive reviews of the show. While I myself wasn't really loving it, the performance we attended received a rapturous standing ovation at the end. (Though that happens all the time at Buell, so maybe isn't very telling.)

The show has moved on now from Denver, but might be coming to your city in the months ahead. I'd advise caution, though. I'm not sure how you'd tell whether you're in the group this works for or the group it doesn't, but I'd call it a B- overall.

Island Day

The Sunday before Thanksgiving was our first full day in Seattle. We used it to visit Vashon Island, in Puget Sound. Part of the visit was about the novelty of getting there. No bridges connect to Vashon, so you have to take a ferry. Driving a car onto a ferry and having it carry you to an island feels Bucket Listy, and we decided to cross it off.

Our plan was to visit a couple of cider markers on the island, but we'd arrived before their noon opening times. So our first stop was the Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie. It's a converted 100-year-old building that houses the original location of what eventually became Seattle's Best Coffee.

The old building wasn't the only atmosphere; we got a strong sense of the island on the drive there. I lost count of the number of rainbow flags I saw in a drive of just a few miles. The locals were clearly a progressive, inclusive bunch of people. Of course, we'd see over the next few days that this described Seattle in general. Yet it felt like as Boulder is to Denver, so Vashon Island is to Seattle -- probably the hippiest, most welcoming, most laid back place in the state.

I'd heard a lot about Point Robinson Lighthouse, on the far tip of the island. As nothing was really that "far" on the island, we drove out to see for ourselves. The lighthouse itself was surprisingly small, not really the sort of thing I'd think of as a tourist draw, but the view (on another uncharacteristically bright and clear day) was impressive.

From there, we hit two cider makers on Vashon, Nashi Orchards and Dragon's Head Cider. Both had beautiful surroundings and tasty drinks. Both impressed us with their Perry ciders even more than the ones made from apples. But Nashi Orchards would get the gold medal. Though they had fewer varieties to sample, each and every one of them was stellar.

In between the two cider makers, we had lunch at a restaurant called The Hardware Store. Like the Coffee Roasterie, this was another conversion of an older building. (Can you guess what the place used to be?) This was one of a few places suggested to us by a local at Nashi Orchards, and you have to go with the recommendation of a local, right? (Though, as he pointed out, having been there "only" 15 years, the True Locals didn't consider him a local.)

We came back across the ferry in the mid-afternoon. Well... late afternoon. We never really did get used to that sunset just after 4:00 pm. But we did regroup and rest at our hotel a bit before heading back out for a low key evening. We switched from cider to beer and tried Black Raven Brewing Company over in Redmond. Like many Denver microbreweries, it was located in an office/warehouse sort of complex. But inside, the place had a fun pub atmosphere with a bit of a twisted and segmented layout. (And it had a decent Coconut Porter too.)

We wrapped up with our one non-seafood dinner of the trip, stopping at a ramen bar and enjoying a change of pace. Between the early sunset, the time zone shift, and all the hopping around, that was all the activity we needed before calling it a fun and complete day.

From the Sea and From the Tap

After settling in at our hotel, we still had the evening to work with. We headed over to Pike Place Market to see the much-talked-about area. Later on in the trip, we'd have a bit of spare time (more on that in a future post), and wound up returning to the market in the day. This first time around, we really just scratched the surface. We got a taste of the hustle and bustle, and the overwhelming scent of fish, but didn't really have a full sense of how far the market actually spread. But by the time we'd found a place for dinner and were walking back through, things had already closed down -- surprisingly early for a Saturday night, we thought.

That dinner was at the nearby Cutters Crabhouse, at a table overlooking the Sound and ferris wheel. The former was shrouded in darkness, the sun having set around 4:30, but the latter was lit up brightly. We hadn't really talked about this before traveling, but now that we were there, we resolved to seek out seafood for most of our meals in Seattle. (Denver not being known for its fresh catches, obviously.) Cutters scratched our itch quite nicely.

After that, we bounced around to a few breweries that were in walking distance. Cloudburst had popped up as "one of the best" in some searching I'd done beforehand, and it had the vibe of some of the hole-in-the-wall places that excel in Denver. It was built in a noisy converted garage that you could easily walk right past without a sign on the sidewalk to guide you. They had a couple of good things worth trying, but both -- while decent -- seemed like imitations of great things we could get back home. (Craft beer in Denver will spoil you.)

We moved on to Old Stove, our best brewery find of the night both in atmosphere and selection. The place was a giant shrine to the University of Michigan, which was just a strange and fun thing to find in Seattle. A flight of their beers let us sample a number of good options, including their Saison du Snozberry, Blackberry Sour, and Downtown Freddie's Brown (a surprise, as I don't normally go for browns).

We then hopped to Pike Brewing, which I believe is the oldest craft brewer in the city (having been around over 25 years). The kitsch in the place was dialed up to the max, with every inch of every wall covered with photos and factoids about craft beer. The beer was robustly average. We tried things that were perfectly accurate (and perfectly forgettable) versions of core beer styles, no frills.

That was enough to satisfy us for our first night in town. After that, it was back to hotel to rest up for our first full day of activities.

(Puget) Sound Off

Thanksgiving week is a notoriously crowded week to fly in America. Hordes of people are headed every which way, and you'd be well-advised to avoid the airports if at all possible.

Unless... maybe... not?

My husband and I decided to use Thanksgiving week to take a vacation, with (we think) a clever work-around in mind. Most people are traveling to be at their destinations by Thanksgiving itself. We were going to fly out the Saturday before, enjoy a few days at our destination, and then fly back home on Thanksgiving when most everybody else was already where they were trying to go. (We were backed up on this theory when we went to book tickets. There was much wider availability, and at a notably lower price, if you returned on Thanksgiving Day.)

All that was left was to pick the destination. We wanted something fairly close and easy, a place with a decent list of things we could do, where neither of us had been before. We decided on Seattle. Yes, in November, which I hear is their rainiest (and dreariest?) month.

Unless... maybe... it isn't?

In our four and a half days of being there, it was sunny and clear almost the entire time. We'd heard it was a rare and special thing to be able to see Mount Rainier, sticking up proudly and in solitude on the horizon; we were able to see it every day until we were nearly done with the trip. It sprinkled half-heartedly only on our last full day there, and then rained again with a touch more gusto on the morning of the sixth day, when we were leaving. (Even then, things cleared up nicely before our actual takeoff.) Things were cold, to be sure -- the humidity in the air makes a clear November day in Seattle a very different thing from a clear November day in Denver. Still, when it came to the weather at least, Seattle wasn't much like it had been advertised.

It was a very friendly place, which we got a taste of at the airport while waiting at the baggage claim. A little girl, about three years old, came running up behind me, screaming "Daddy!" loud enough for everyone to hear. I turned around just in time to stop her about a foot from throwing her arms around my legs, when she realized to much confusion and embarrassment that I was not, in fact, her Daddy. But hey, cute kid.

In the days ahead, I'll regale those who care with tales of our trip (peppering in other blog entries for those who don't). We did quite a lot with our time, so there's plenty to cover.

Dis-Grindled

Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them was, by the high standards set by the preceding Harry Potter films and books, a disappointment. But it was essentially the first entry in J.K. Rowling's universe to be anything less than "quite good," and thus easy to explain away as an aberration, a bump in the road, growing pains in setting up a new second chapter of Harry Potter. But now we have the sequel film, The Crimes of Grindelwald, and that explanation no longer holds. We appear to have a "new normal" for the franchise.

I could, in fact, largely copy-paste my thoughts on the first Fantastic Beasts film in reviewing the second. As with the first film, there's no shortage here of intriguing and fun ideas. J.K. Rowling is nowhere near done expanding the universe she's created, and does not appear to be losing any enthusiasm or skill for building it out. But also as with the first film, she demonstrates that she is not a screen writer. She really seems to need the sprawl of a novel in which to lay down her stories, and then someone else to come along to edit, curate, and repackage them in a way that works in the medium of movies.

There isn't a plot to The Crimes of Grindelwald so much as there's a ledger. Lots of things happen, to be sure, but there doesn't really seem to be a natural sequence to events. Very little can be said to happen because something happened before it. This isn't storytelling worthy of one of the bestselling authors of all time, a clockwork construction where the dominoes fall inevitably in a satisfying way. This is a rambling toddler telling you "this happened, and then this happened," with little rhyme or reason to connect things.

The film revolves around Grindelwald's attempts to find young Credence and seduce him into becoming an ally. It's immediately non-sensical in at least two major ways. First (by my memory, at least), Credence was neutralized as a threat at the end of the previous film, with no indication of anything unresolved there. Second, nothing actually stands in the way of Grindelwald achieving his goal. I mean that quite literally; after a five-minute opening sequence (a dizzying display of CG that's impossible to sort out in your head), there's no articulated obstacle to Grindelwald proceeding straight to his end goal. He simply... doesn't, until the final act.

I knock the CG in the opening scene, but that's not to say CG is an evil throughout the film. One of the true delights of this new movie is a large creature with incongruously cat-like behavior. Sight gags at the margins of the frame are often the work of visual effects too, and really make the world feel fun.

There are some character moments that work too -- basically, most everything involving Dumbledore. Jude Law gives a great performance that feels in continuity with the actors who've played the character before, but with touches all his own. Scenes set at Hogwarts are fun, and Dumbledore's interactions with students (both past and present) are highlights of the film. His relationship with Grindelwald, on the other hand, is portrayed in a predictably shallow and cowardly way. J.K. Rowling famously created waves by declaring (with little evidence in her writing) that Dumbledore is gay. The subtext remains stalwartly "sub" in this movie. There's essentially a single line of dialogue and a single glance that speak to the truth; the former moment has reportedly actually played for laughs with some preview audiences (and seemed hella cheesy to me), while the latter takes place in a context that works only for serious Potter fans.

There are a few somewhat intriguing new characters in this film, including Leta Lestrange and Theseus Scamander... but time developing them is clearly coming at the expense of the established characters from the first film. Newt remains impenetrably one-dimensional, Jacob and Tina are entirely marginalized with no meaningful role in the plot whatsoever, and Queenie's behavior throughout is unjustified (and, I dare say, unjustifiable). Grindlewald himself isn't even developed particularly well as a villain. It feels like the most diabolical "crimes" of the film are carried out by others in his name, and efforts near the end to "give the villain a point of view" are frankly too effective. (If I'm correctly picking up what he/Rowling are putting down here, his "ends" are 100% noble; only his "means" are questionable. Which sounds like what you'd want in a good villain, but still doesn't come off very compelling here.)

Overall, the sprinkles of good feel fewer and farther between than in the first Fantastic Beasts, while the muddy lack of clarity feels greater. I give The Crimes of Grindlewald a C-. I believe I'm done following this franchise in movie theaters. I suspect it's all home rentals for me from here on.

Notes on a Vandal

Last month, Netflix announced that it had cancelled its once buzzed-about show American Vandal after two seasons. I'd just begun to watch it, making me officially late to the party. But Netflix is a massive bulldozer pushing dirt into a hole you're trying to climb out of, so the cancellation was also a bit of a relief: I could enjoy the 16 episodes of the show, and then move on.

American Vandal is in many ways a satire of Netflix itself, specifically one of its other buzzed-about shows, the documentary Making a Murderer. (Yes, I'm working through season 2 of that right now.) It's a parody of true crime documentaries, following two teenagers as they try to unravel implausibly dense conspiracies surrounding relatively low-stakes crimes in their high school. Season 1's case revolves around a student accused of vandalizing 27 faculty members' cars by spray-painting dicks on them. ("Who did the dicks?") Season 2 is about a series of traumatizing pranks all involving poop. ("Who is the Turd Burglar?")

You could almost watch American Vandal and not realize it's supposed to be funny. It slavishly adheres to the tropes of these deep-dive documentaries, things like Making a Murderer, the Paradise Lost trilogy, and (with the re-enactment footage added in season 2) Unsolved Mysteries and The Thin Blue Line. It's completely faithful in tone and structure, with only the subject matter betraying the true intent here (and the occasional hilarious bit of dialogue delivered with an utter lack of self-awareness).

American Vandal also wears a disguise in that it's actually a fairly legit teen drama, albeit in unconventional form for that genre. A lot of it revolves around the social pressures of adolescence, and the characters really are sympathetic even though they're often larger-than-life. The meta-commentary aspect of the story, more than the parody, is what seemed to earned the critics' praise of the show.

Those same critics mostly seem to say that season 1 was the surprise-out-of-nowhere gem, while season 2 was a surprisingly-good-but-not-as-great follow up. I personally would disagree. I suppose it depends on what draws you in, but I found season 2 to be the far more overtly funny of the two, and thus the one I preferred.

One thing I think is certain, though. If you've ever watched a true crime documentary, especially one made to try to exonerate the innocent, the parody of American Vandal will almost certainly appeal to you. I'd give Season 1 a B- and Season 2 a B+, averaging the whole thing out to a B. It's a low commitment by Netflix standards -- 8 episodes in each season, each one just half an hour, and now concluded. It's perhaps not the "can't praise it enough" jewel that is Santa Clarita Diet, but I think some of my readers will enjoy it.

Death and Comedy

Though it didn't get a wide release in theaters earlier this year, I was eager to see The Death of Stalin. The release was so "narrow," however, that it don't believe it ever actually played anywhere near me. (And chances are you haven't even heard of it.) It's now come to the various video formats, though, and I was able to catch up.

The Death of Stalin is a satire from writer-director Armando Iannucci, the creator of HBO's Veep. Set in 1953 Soviet Russia, the film tells you what it is right in the title. In the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's death, we watch his immediate underlings vie (clumsily) for power, struggling (humorously) against each other to seize the reins.

Veep isn't "lightning in a bottle." In fact, I became aware of Iannucci first through his film In the Loop. (This itself was a movie conclusion/continuation of his TV series The Thick of It -- essentially the British precursor to Veep. That's still a show I want to make time for.) If anything, I was hoping here for the high hilarity of In the Loop in a Russian setting. My expectations were set far too high.

There are a few moments of cringe-worthy humor in The Death of Stalin -- some good old-fashioned physical comedy with the dictator's dead body, some ridiculous jockeying for literal position over who will stand where at his funeral. But mostly, The Death of Stalin felt like an exceedingly dry movie. Much of the comedy is dark, dark, dark -- people fretting over whether or not they'll be rounded up and/or shot. (And many of them often see their fears come true.) It's not generally laugh-out-loud fare. "You may think things today are bad, but they're not THIS bad" isn't really the brand of entertainment I was signing up for.

This film comes out bleak despite the presence and efforts of many funny people trying to lighten the proceedings. The cast includes Steve Buscemi, Michael Palin, Jeffrey Tambor, and Jason Isaacs. It also includes many people you'd know best (if you know them at all) from quite serious roles, people like Simon Russell Beale (Penny Dreadful) and Rupert Friend (Homeland). They play broad, but the script doesn't generate enough belly laughs to bubble up through a relentlessly dark landscape.

In the end, I simply didn't like this film. It had a few moments, to be sure -- but I thought my sense of humor accommodated dark, and this film was too dark for me. If you like your comedy dry and black as night, you might just love this movie. I found it a D+ at best. The Death of Stalin is only for a very select few.

Walking the Path

On occasion, I've written about escape rooms I've done with my friends around Denver (and one "not around Denver"). This weekend, we tried out a place that was new to us: Denver Escape Room in Northglenn. Like EscapeWorks Denver downtown, I'd give it a high recommendation.

There were 10 of us on this excursion, and we broke into two groups to try Grim Stacks (themed like a Harry Potter-esque book shop) and The Path (a Chinese themed room). I was in the latter group.

The Path was similar to the Taphophobiaroom at Crooked Key in Steamboat Springs -- it was a cleverly designed experience that avoided using any traditional locks. Working through the room was all about solving riddles and logic puzzles, recognizing patterns and making use of reference information scattered around the environment. No padlocks, no combination locks. Instead, doors and drawers were held shut by electromagnetism, and you had to solve puzzles to release the seal.

The production values inside the room were excellent. I've been to a couple of other escape rooms around town now, and this isn't always the case. I've seen as low as "weekend garage sale raid" to as middling as "high school theater" to as sky high as "this must have taken weeks." Denver Escape Room is more in that last category. The Path presented a neat environment full of things to see and do; everyone who did Grim Stacks gushed similarly (as much as they could without spoiling the room's secrets).

The doling out of hints by the room's overseers was also handled well. I've done rooms where the operator too frequently nudges you along, as if they're being paid by the success. Then there are the rooms where you have to ask for help -- which can leave a group too stubborn to admit when they need it. We did get stuck on The Path a couple of times (once over the dumbest thing; it's embarrassing), and the hints arrived with perfect timing. We were allowed to struggle as a group for several minutes, going back over every part of the room and talking through our roadblock together. We had the chance to solve things on our own before getting the push.

Both groups escaped, each with around 15 minutes left in our hour. (The Stacks group was about two or three minutes faster, so they can gloat about that if they want.) But success or fail, I knew after a few minutes that I'd be wanting to go back to try the place again. Perhaps the same large group can get together to swap rooms. Or try this place's unusual head-to-head experience, which allows two teams to actually compete against each other in the same room.

Northglenn isn't my end of town, but this is worth driving there for. If you like escape rooms, check out Denver Escape Room.

Eight Is Enough

I missed Ocean's 8 when it ran in movie theaters earlier this year. Despite my love of heist movies, I really wasn't hearing anybody saying good things about it... or much of anything about it. It slid down to "I'll catch it at home in a few months" status.

Ocean's 8 is the reboot/sequel to the Ocean's Eleven trilogy. This time, an all-female team led by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett are planning a jewel heist during the prestigious Met Gala. All the trappings you'd expect from heist movies (and from the Ocean's series in particular) are there, from recruiting the team, to planning the caper, to dealing with complications, to the secret twist in the plan the audience doesn't get to see until the end.

Indeed, the movie follows the Ocean's formula a bit too slavishly. The film starts with Bullock's Debbie Ocean at a parole hearing that sees her released from prison, exactly as the original film starts with George Clooney. The banter between Bullock and Blanchett is styled just like that between Clooney and Brad Pitt (and Blanchett's role in the heist is even possibly a nod to Pitt's decision to eat in every scene of the original film). There's a revenge angle to the caper, just as in the original. It's not all one-for-one, but it is too close for comfort.

The cast is doing their level best. Bullock and Blanchett are great top-liners, exuding cool and collected "smartest person in the room" vibes from beginning to end. The team they recruit is full of talented actresses definitely having fun with their roles -- though they're often having to do heavy lifting for characters that aren't especially well drawn. The two standouts are Anne Hathaway and Sarah Paulson. Hathaway broadly plays an egomaniacal movie star and is given scenery-chewing moments to match. Paulson is fun as a suburban mom whose booming business as a fence provides fun comedy moments.

On the other end of the scale, Helena Bonham Carter feels wasted as a washed-up fashion designer; Carter's career is marked with countless bold characters, yet this movie feels like it never gives her the chance to spread her wings. Meanwhile, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina, and Rihanna all feel like they fade into the middle somewhere. They get a few moments, but these feel sure to be forgotten in a few weeks' time as the movie evaporates from memory.

Ocean's 8 is actually not a "bad" movie at all. It's fun enough to watch, even if it slows down in parts. But you also get occasional glimpses of how great a movie might have been with this assembled talent. I'd call Ocean's 8 maybe a B-, but that could be generous thanks to my soft spot for the caper genre.

Family Drama

I'd heard good things about the thriller Hereditary, released earlier this year. I got around to seeing it for myself at an appropriate time for a scary movie -- the night before Halloween.

Hereditary is a tough film to explain, as much of its charm comes in not knowing what could happen next. Most would call it a horror movie, though it isn't a slasher. The chills are mostly psychological and creepy (but, admittedly, with a few choreographed jumps). It focuses on a family of four: a husband and wife, their high-school-aged son, and their 13-year-old daughter. The film focuses on Annie, the mother, who has just lost her own mother to dementia. Their relationship was a rocky one even before the disease, so Annie's feelings are complicated. Complicating things more are increasing hints that "dear departed grandma" has left behind a legacy that could unravel the entire family.

This is the first feature film from writer-director Ari Aster, but it doesn't feel like a first effort at all. The storytelling and technique are confident throughout. The camera work is far from simple, with several challenging long takes, clever cutting that often focuses on reactions more than dialogue, and subtle visual effects you can sometimes almost overlook. A recurring visual motif is built upon Annie's job as a miniatures artist. Many scenes inside the family's house are filmed from super-wide angles to present the impression that the audience itself is looking inside a dollhouse.

The chills build slowly. Despite having heard little about the film beyond its quality, I had certain expectations about the type of thing I was going to see. Half an hour in, it had become clear this movie wasn't going to be that. Half an hour more, and it suddenly seemed it was going to be that after all! Near the end, it took a wild turn yet again. (More on that in a moment.) As the movie transitions beyond setup and character building and begins trying to scare in earnest, it does a good job in scene after scene of setting you up to expect the thrill in one way but delivering it in another. It's a well-crafted ride.

The performances are fantastic throughout. Toni Collette plays Annie. Many critics hailed this as the best performance of her career, and they might not be wrong. It's intense and hypnotic and powerfully real, particularly in moments where she delivers long monologues on grief. Gabriel Byrne plays husband Steve, who has perhaps the most secretly challenging role in the movie, bottling up his own feelings for the sake of his wife, then letting them leak through in believable ways. Alex Wolff plays the son Peter, who emerges after many twists and turns as the most sympathetic figure in the movie. The script asks for an incredible range from him, and he always delivers. Then there's young newcomer Milly Shapiro as daughter Charlie. She gives one of the great "creepy kid of horror" performances. (And gets a big assist from the production in emphasizing her unusually adult appearance. My husband commented on her unsettling look that she looked like a face swap.)

I have just two reservations. One has to do with the music and sound design. It's mostly very effective, but occasionally it's more distracting. There's an extreme amount of dissonance in the music, and a lot of bass rumbling in the sound design that's meant to be subliminal but often isn't. The saturation of these elements sometimes makes the film feel like it isn't coming by all its scares "honestly."

Then there's the ending. It's wholly earned, at least, by the way the story has built to it. Yet there's also a bit of a "what just happened?" quality to the final minutes as well. It reminded me some of The Witch, from a few years back, though this movie succeeded in the things that movie failed at from beginning to end.

My reservations don't really bring down my enthusiasm for the whole. I'd give Hereditary an A-. If you're into thrillers, this one really feels like a can't-miss movie to me. It's tense and suspenseful, with moments both powerfully dramatic and powerfully creepy. Great fun to watch curled up under a blanket on the couch.