The Big Picture

Benjamin Finkel’s debut announces the arrival of a new horror filmmaker you’ll want to keep your eye on.

Family
falls in line with contemporary “arthouse horror” films, but never feels repetitive or like a copycat.
Don’t think that means scares are shoved to the background — you’re going to yelp and squirm around plenty.

We love a feature debut like Benjamin Finkel’s haunting chiller Family that immediately announces a powerful filmmaking voice. It’s not just creepy, it’s downright scary in a way that harkens back to Ari Aster’s Hereditary or Remi Weekes’ His House. My notes are littered with comparison points like Baskin, Gretel & Hansel, The Babadook, and A Dark Song that make up the film’s sobering entrapment based on the looming specter of immeasurable loss. Finkel writes and directs a visually arresting albeit cosmically untelling tale of familial despair, in which there is no such phrase as “Home Sweet Home,” and trusted relations become the monsters among us.

What Is ‘Family’ About?
The film starts with a dream: an 11-year-old only child named Johanna (Lucinda Lee Dawson Gray) screams for mercy right before Ruth Wilson’s mother figure (Naomi) brutally murders her daughter. When she awakens, reality sets back in. Johanna is adjusting after an emergency relocation because her sickly father, Harry (Ben Chaplin), needs top medical attention as his life-threatening condition rapidly worsens. Harry can no longer chase his child outdoors without feeling like he’ll collapse or make it through dinner without a phlegmy coughing fit. Johanna clutches onto the hope that an oval, Robin egg blue birdhouse with gold patterns can save her father, which she hangs outside and utters an invitation for healing spirits who can enter the wooden fixture. The “spirit call” works, but as you might assume — since Family is a capital-H horror film — her birdhouse welcomes an entity that starts terrorizing Johanna and relentlessly tearing her world apart.

Finkel sets himself the immediate challenge of hinging his traumatizing story on the performance of an adolescent protagonist. Bluntly, not all child actors can carry movies like lil’ Lucinda Lee Dawson Gray. All the performances are incredibly strong — Ben Chaplin as the bony, radiation-riddled man in a losing battle, Ruth Wilson as the overwhelmed woman under pressure trying to hold everything together — but Gray is the “hero” of Family, and she’s mature beyond her years as a performer. Family is so frightening in parts thanks to Gray’s frantic pleas as the malevolent force manipulates what we see versus what characters see, linking to childhood horrors of going unheard or being left entirely alone. Gray nails the complexities behind Johanna’s grief and how she processes the slow, agonizing demise of her dearest dad, as well as the bone-chilling haunts that slither forward when she’s left without a babysitter.

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Family feels in line with contemporary arthouse horror fare, some of which I’ve already mentioned, but that doesn’t mean it skimps on scares. Finkel shows a tremendous command over sound design matched to disturbing imagery, including anything from ghoulish body horror where skeletons crunch while bent inhumanly, or nightmarish figures attentively postured upright at the end of a hallway (shout out to Toto the Dog). Fearful highlights deal with the uncanny and extreme manipulation since Johanna believes she’s hearing either mom or pop from afar, only to find something with elongated, blackened fingernails stretching from inside the oblong birdhouse. Finkle hits on those imaginative early-years fears that’d send us racing up basement steps once we flick off lights, but worse, he goes to great lengths when eviscerating the safeguards of family relationships to ensure every second post-demonic invasion is heavy with tension.

‘Family’ Lives and Dies By Its Ending
Image via SXSW

It’s in the third act where Family will either win or lose audiences, which is, at the very least, the mark of something interesting. That’s where the “cosmic” comes in, and Finkle feels Darren Aronofsky’s instincts flow through his body. The “art” portion of arthouse slams into viewers full force, favoring a cerebral assault that might provoke more questions than answers and heaps style atop substance, but I’d rather a gamble than something rote or mundane. Finkle has no problem meeting the intensity of Johanna’s physically and mentally grueling journey, unlocking a third gear that some films can only dream about. Allan Corduner’s grandfather, a local rabbi, attempts to diffuse Johanna’s strife and provide guidance. Still, everything in the back half seems to become a beast of its own making that is more enamored with visuals than definitive outlines. There are clear shades of Toni Collette’s breakdown in Hereditary present as Wilson’s matriarch loses control (sublimely carried out as a horror antagonist), but also a very Guillermo del Toro quality about Johanna’s final confrontation. How it all comes together may be up in the air — but there’s an undeniably thrilling puzzlement factor.

Finkel’s behind-the-camera control sells the at-times unwieldy back half, some parts feeling like Mother!, others a religious unraveling meets deviant fairy tale. Family is capably shot and visually compelling, even considering the barebones nature of a newly purchased house that’s yet to be decorated or feels lived-in. That only adds to the surrealness as Johanna fights back against a spirit that clearly desires to cause harm, which contrasts with vast whimsy as she peers into the peephole of her birdhouse, and views a galaxy’s worth of celestial twinkles. You don’t usually see first-timers swing this big or connect so frequently, which makes Finkle’s debut so exciting. Whatever he does next deservingly earns all eyes and attention.

Family is an exuberant and confident first feature that disturbs, allures, and strikes terror. Finkel is instantly a filmmaker to watch, considering what he’s able to accomplish with an independent production. There’s such a tightness and composure whether you’re talking about tremendous performances or gorgeously sinister visuals. Complaints about payoffs are valid and understood, but it’s not enough to sink everything else Finkle accomplishes. Any horror film that gets me to squirm in my seat these days immediately snags my attention, and Family did that multiple times. What an announcement this is for the arrival of Benjamin Finkel.

Family (2024) REVIEWFamily goes for big swings in the back half, but takes the phrase “Home Sweet Hell” to heart and delivers something uniquely unsettling and never concedes its ideas to appease the masses.ProsFinkel shows impressive command over Family.It?s a downright scary haunted house riff.All of the performances are spot-on, especially Lucinda Lee Dawson Gray. ConsThe film’s ambitions can be hard to swallow toward the end.The film would benefit from more showing and not as much telling.

Family had its World Premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.