Hereditary
Everybody enjoys a great popcorn flick: the trick is finding one with a decent ratio of brains to pyrotechnics. If Solo and Infinity War left you more exhausted than exhilarated, then this art-house horror gem straight from Sundance has arrived just in the nick of time. With flat-out raves from Park City, Ari Aster’s feature debut is something of a horror hybrid, culling just as much fright from twisted family dynamics as from the truly bizarre and disturbing descent into genre madness. Hereditary also boasts a stellar cast with Nat Wolff, Gabriel Byrne, and Toni Collette as the tortured matriarch at the center of the maelstrom. When her strange and reclusive mother dies, Collette’s character feels only relief until the dark family secret, of which her mother was the steward, begins to manifest in exponentially terrifying ways. In theaters June 8.
Impulse
It’s not every day a director gets a second chance; but when that director is Doug Liman, that second time very well may be the charm. Liman originally adapted Stephen Gould’s Jumper novels back in 2008 and the resulting misfire was roundly panned by critics. But these days, if at first a movie doesn’t succeed, maybe that means it should be a streaming series? Executive producing and directing this new YouTube Red series, Liman leaps right back into the fray with a different novel from Gould, this time focusing on a cocky teen girl Henry Coles who moves to upstate New York and quickly finds herself a maligned outsider in the social jungle that is high school. But when an entitled Jock tries to assault her in his car after school, Henry suddenly discovers she has the incredible ability to teleport—a power that leaves a trail of carnage, both physical and emotional, behind her. Premieres on YouTube Red June 6.
The Staircase
Before The Jinx and Making A Murderer made armchair lawyers of us all, this French documentary series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade set the standard for how much twisting drama and reversals could be mined from real-life. Thanks to the largesse of Netflix, the original series gets a new life, with three new episodes that update the infamous case of author Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife by pushing her down the stairs of their North Carolina home in 2001. Peterson, of course, claimed it was a set-up by police and prosecutors determined to railroad him—and at first blush, his idyllic family life seemed a far cry from the Patricia Highsmith-esque domestic crime story they painted. But, of course, in both families and justice, nothing is what it seems at first glance. There’s apparently no end to the bizarre theorizing about the case, which should quench the non-fiction withdrawal you may be suffering after finishing Netflix’s other non-fiction binge-fest Wild, Wild Country. Available June 8 on Netflix.
