Yes, there are a lot of “what’s that in the corner of the room? A sweater folded over a chair? Something worse? Something truly unspeakable?” moments. Yes, there are strange sounds – sounds which could be as innocent as a dripping tap, or… well, something not so innocent. But Hereditary also employs a plethora of entirely new techniques for sending shivers down audience’s spines, too.

It muddles dreams with hallucinations with reality, so you never quite know what’s what. Each family member betrays themselves, in turn, to be a dangerously unreliable narrator – so much so that it becomes increasingly difficult to trust anyone and everyone. Grief proves to be one of the most frightening phantoms of all, plaguing Annie and her loved ones at every corner. And, after a chance meeting with spiritualist Joan (Ann Dowd), Annie takes part in a séance which unfolds exactly as you might expect, right down to the quavering call of “Are there any spirits present?” – before completely and utterly shattering those expectations, one by one.

Throughout, Hereditary refuses to let you get your bearings: classic horror tropes are held up and then ignored, causing your stomach to churn on a pretty much constant basis. Tiny little moments of beautifully banal ordinariness are interspersed with the nightmarish discord (Annie makes a point of reminding her daughter to take her wet socks off when she tracks in mud from the garden, worrying far more about the damp footprints than whatever it was that lured the child out there in the first place). The film keeps its setting fascinatingly indeterminate, too: yes, there are mobile phones – but the teens ride bikes everywhere (which, thanks to Stranger Things, shoots you straight back in time to the Eighties). Yes, there are cars and electric lights – but the furniture is dated, the clothing kept deliberately “classic” or timeless. The teens are seen attending lessons in a classroom which wouldn’t look out of place in Saved By The Bell, the roads stretch out – empty and desolate – like something out of 1969’s Easy Rider, and don’t even get me started on that creepy Dracula-esque house.

This refusal to commit to a decade keeps you feeling confused, off-kilter and unbalanced. And, as such, Hereditary renders you far more susceptible to the emotions being played out by the overwhelmingly talented actors on screen before you.

“I went to see the ‘scariest horror film of all time’. It did not end well”