Alex Wolff

In Hereditary (2018), Alex Wolff’s Peter Graham does not compete with Toni Collette for volume. He lets the boy’s vulnerability register beside her visible distress, while Gabriel Byrne’s quieter presence gives the family another way to respond to pain. We found Peter difficult to watch because Wolff makes him seem so poorly equipped to withstand the anguish around him. Ari Aster gets something valuable from those differences: the actors can make the family frightening without all behaving alike. We recommend the film strongly, with reservations about its slow stretches and its urge to explain what the performances have already made clear.

Wolff’s shift towards film work in the mid-2010s brought roles in Patriots Day (2016) and My Friend Dahmer (2017). Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) reached a broader audience, while Hereditary made the troubled young man central to his reputation. There is a danger in that kind of recognition: an actor can be asked to suffer repeatedly when there are other things worth asking of him. Writing, directing and starring in The Cat and the Moon (2019) gave him another kind of responsibility. His subsequent work includes Pig (2021), opposite Nicolas Cage, as well as further studio films.

In Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), his nurse Reuben offers warmth in the little time available to him. Lupita Nyong’o carries the film, and Wolff’s contribution is modest, but his warmth gives us a reason to want more than frightened adolescents from him. The part is too brief to announce a great change of direction, and there is no need to make it one. The repetitive monster sequences are a frustration; we would have welcomed more time for the people, including Reuben. Start with Hereditary for the substantial performance, and do not assume its distress is all he has to offer.