When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited.

A leading contender for the scariest film of the century so far, Hereditary made a global splash following its Sundance debut. First features rarely come as precociously assured, and while shock tactics abound, they’re wholly in service of a troubling study in grief and unreconciled family trauma.