Months ago, I was so excited to hear about a new horror movie being released: Ari Aster's 'Hereditary'. In my opinion, recent horror movies are barely scary, painfully cliche, and predictable, almost to the point where they're hard to watch. So, when I heard all the ranting and raving about the film, I had to check out the trailer for myself.

The trailer shares a story about a family that is coping with the recent death of the wife's mother. It seems as if paranormal occurrences start to take place as soon as the mother dies. The two main characters that are portrayed to be struggling the most with the recent events are the wife and the young daughter. Thanks to the suspenseful music, facial expressions of the characters (at one point the mother screams frantically without any audio for the audience to hear) and special effects, one can almost be certain that 'Hereditary' is a solid horror movie.

Trailers have the ability to give the audience a really good peek into what a film is going to offer. There are the occasional instances where trailers trick, either intentionally or unintentionally, the audience into believing that the movie is centered on something that it really isn't.

An example of a movie in which it's trailer distorted the content and meaning of the film itself is Darren Aronofsky's 'Mother!'. If you watch the trailer, you're guaranteed to be left thinking about how scary the movie must be; that's what I thought, at least. Yet, when I sat down to watch it, by the end of the movie, I was speechless because of how the trailer falsely set me up to interpret the movie.

My family had been counting down the days until the release of 'Hereditary' for weeks. We would even send screenshots of movie reviews in our family group chat, giving just enough of a glimpse into how "terrifying" and "disturbing" critics found the movie to be. Then, after weeks of re-watching trailers and sneak peaks, my family finally got to watch it on the big screen.

I believe it was about an hour or so into the movie when I started to realize the trailer falsely advertised it. There is no doubt that the movie made me grip the arms of my chair and left me speechless at certain scenes. However, I was kind of bummed when it finished. I asked myself: was that worth all the hype?

As we made our way out of the theatre, we all exchanged glances with each other, agreeing in unison and without words that the movie was… odd. The first thing I told my parents was that the trailer had misportrayed the film. I even made a mental list of all the ways the trailer distorted the film.

First of all, I don't want to give away anything central to the film, but let's just say that a particular character that was frequently showed in the trailer lacked prominence in the film itself. Conversely, a character that was shown briefly in the trailer turned out to be the most important and valuable character for the sake of the plot.

Secondly, 'Hereditary' is not solely a story about a family being tormented by a sinister presence after a beloved family member dies. Although this is how the trailer portrays the film, the movie is so much more than that. I believe, above everything else, that this movie is a hardcore family drama that uses aspects of a horror film to present how scary and chilling family events and ties can be.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I barely jumped out of my seat or closed my eyes in anticipation. What I found myself doing more of as the movie continued was tensing my body, biting my lips, and clutching my bag of popcorn because of how intense the family members became as the story unraveled.

I liked 'Hereditary', as I thought it was a very interesting watch. Aster did an amazing directorial job, and the actors poured their hearts out for their roles; the emotions shown within the scenes made the fine hairs on my arms rise in awe. Nevertheless, I wish I knew walking into the movie that what was waiting for me was not a classic supernatural movie, but rather a movie with aspects of a horror film used as a tool to portrayal chilling, yet common, family relationships.

Yet, maybe this way of advertising proves to be useful when it comes to exposing certain audiences to movies that play in different genres. Thus, I admire Aster, and similar directors, for such creative thinking. I might have never seen 'Hereditary' if it was branded as a horror movie. Nevertheless, it was definitely a thrilling watch, to say the least.