The scariest horror movies can be a test not just of your courage, but of your endurance, too. How long is too long to sit tense with dreadful anticipation? In its first cut, the upcoming horror movie Hereditary was three hours long--and that would have asked too much of audiences, according to writer and director Ari Aster.Hereditary follows the Graham family as their lives unravel following the death of family matriarch, Ellen. As we stated in our review, `a dysfunctional family isn`t a particularly original source of horror, and Hereditary doesn`t blow the genre open with some revolutionary new take. It`s just gripping, white-knuckled, old school horror that never, over more than two hours, lets you get comfortable for long, despite the familiarity of its themes and tropes.` So how does it keep the tension up?Aster told GameSpot that he wanted to strike a balance between horror and family drama in Hereditary. `There`s a dance that we were doing,` he said. `I needed it to work as much as a drama as a horror film.`That `dance` involved meeting the demands of both genres. Aster believes films of any genre--from horror to comedy--are only `satisfying` to audiences if they meet the demands of that genre, and in doing so meet the audience`s expectations. `The challenge then becomes, how do I meet those demands in ways that people are not expecting?` he said.For Hereditary`s drama side, that meant exploring the characters` relationships as much as possible. But that also wound up being where most of the cuts occurred.`I wanted the film to work as a family drama,` Aster said. `I needed to attend to the family dynamics and build a pretty vivid history for them.` Aster`s first cut of the film was three hours long, and it was clear he`d need to trim it significantly--the writer and director said that version `tested people`s patience.` The final theatrical release is just two hours and seven minutes. With almost an hour gone, the big question for fans is going to be wh ...
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