Gateway Horror for Brave Beginners & Spotlight on Horror Composers

Hereditary was the first horror film I allowed myself to watch. And what a perfect choice. I was going to wait to write this up until a rewatch. but Mike Flanagan's wonderful Recommended Gateway Horror for Beginners brought my early horror picks back in my mind, so I may write some up. This is not a normal pick for a first horror film; it is supposed to be very frightening. But it worked for me, and it would be hard to find someone more scared of horror than I was in 2021 before I did the work and it became my favorite genre ever.

I love everything about Hereditary. The pacing works for me, and the wide variety of horror, from seances to tongue clicks to head issues to immolation, neck sawing, room-corner-scurrying, the dead self-levitating—it throws a lot at you. Ari Aster strikes the perfect tone here—I always love the uncanny in horror, and I struggle to like the grotesque, and here you do have moments of very intense violence, but for the most part, Hereditary is chilling and carries that form of counterintuitive beauty that somehow permeates this type of horror.

I went into this film totally prepared—that is to say, I presumed it would traumatize me, so I read every detail of everything that might be frightening. For the last part, I had to pause and make the window smaller to not freak out. Honestly, I regret doing this, because in retrospect, this film would never have crossed my boundaries even then, and it reduced the impact. But if I hadn't done so, I might never have gotten up the nerve to watch horror whatsoever.

This is a film that is so self-evidently at the absolute top of this craft that it is not trendy to love it. But find me a viewer who loves this genre who genuinely finds nothing to value in this, and I will be baffled, because I've never met one.

I think this is a really good introduction to horror for a new viewer. There is no point making them watch something mediocre, and the violence is so constrained to specific scenes that it's easy to pause and get them to not panic. Moreover, this is probably the film they heard about, so there will be a sense of accomplishment. Get them to enjoy this, and you are set. Give it a shot; it worked for me.

Relevant Lists:
Spotlight on Horror Composers
Gateway Horror for Actual Beginners