Horror movies—schlocky, gory, full of jump scares, and shrieking violins—are rarely “good” by critical standards. But now that Get Out’s Jordan Peele won an Oscar, and Jim Halpert’s The Quiet Place is set to spend another week at the top of the box office charts, it is time to take a closer look at the genre.
It is possible to make a horror movie that also happens to be good enough for prestige actors to willingly participate, though this is a recent phenomenon. Consider Hereditary, a horror movie about the terrors of what we inherit from our family. Featuring Toni Collette and Ann Dowd, the trailer is chock-full of the kind of imagery that one might find in another, lesser film. There’s a creepy child; a dead bird; a man on fire; and the promise of a dead grandmother who hangs around, spectrally, for longer than is necessary.