'Hereditary' Star Addresses the Film's Low Cinemascore and High Critical Praise

Recent years have seen services like Rotten Tomatoes and Cinemascore offering to shed light on the value of a film, with the former calculating the number of positive reviews a film receives while the latter polls the response from audiences walking out of a screening. These services are meant to help audiences determine which movies they want to see, but in the case of a film like Hereditary, which earned 89 percent positive reviews and only a D+ Cinemascore, these services only confuse potential viewers. Star Alex Wolff confirmed how pointless all of these statistics are, especially when it comes to such a complex film as Hereditary.

"I think if you start looking at a movie like Hereditary in terms of scores and percentages, that's going to drive you crazy because that's really not what it's about," Wolff shared with ComicBook.com. "If Rosemary's Baby probably had percentages and Cinemascore in the '70s, or The Exorcist, people would've been giving it an F- and whatever amount of percent."

Contradicting statistics aren't a given within the horror genre, as A Quiet Place earned 95 percent positive reviews and a B+ Cinemascore.

"I think that the difference between a movie like A Quiet Place and Hereditary, even though nothing is similar, one of the main differences is A Quiet Place gives you an inspirational, puffy feel at the end. It's a fun movie," Wolff noted. "I wouldn't call it a very dark, disturbing movie. I would call it really fun, and fun scary, where Hereditary kind of crawls in your bones, and sits there, and just kind of eats at your every paranoia and fear."

Hereditary is unquestionably a horrifying experience, though its far from a traditional horror film. When a grandmother dies, her family is left to cope with their feelings regarding her loss, only to uncover a series of dark secrets that the grandmother left behind. Not only does the film offer unsettling horror imagery, but the dramatic tension also results in an anxiety-inducing experience.

"A lot of people look at horror movies as escapism, and I think Hereditary does the opposite," Wolff admitted. "I think Hereditary stops you and makes you answer for everything you've ever felt terrified about, or deeply upset about. So you walk in there, I'm sure audiences wanted to just be brought out of the world they're in, and they didn't have the patience for a movie building it up, and making you feel for these characters. The people, to me, who really loved and know about films think that Hereditary kind of changed the game."

Anyone involved with making a film hopes their journey can find an audience, whether that be critics or the general public, with Wolff noting that the biggest reward is making a piece of art that you're proud of, regardless of how it's received.

"We all poured our hearts and our souls, and gave that movie every single drop of what we had, and so, yes, it's great the critics loved it, but even if they didn't, we made something that was raw," the actor professed. "We made something that was inside out. We made something that was different, and I think we all put our asses on the line for it, and bared all. Whatever the response was, I was just so proud to be a part of it."

You can check out Hereditary on Digital HD now and on Blu-ray and DVD on September 4th.

Do you consider a film's various scores important when deciding if you want to check it out? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!