Hereditary

Annie’s mother, Ellen, has just died. They’d been estranged for several years but had begun to build bridges after the birth of her daughter, Charlie, 13 years before. Ellen had started to take over caring for Charlie to the point that she wouldn’t even let Annie feed her and this drove a wedge between the pair leading to them eventually becoming estranged for a second time.

As Ellen got older and more infirm she moved into Annie’s home where Ellen and Charlie began to bond on a deep level and as a result her Grandmother’s death deeply affects Charlie. She becomes withdrawn from the family, hiding herself away in her tree house and having to be forced to go to school.

It’s at one of these days at school where Charlie’s behaviour worsens when a bird flies in to the classroom window and kills itself. During break time, Charlie finds the bird and chops its head off with a pair of scissors, keeping it in her pocket.

Unsure how to process her own grief, Annie starts to attend a grief support group where she starts to discuss the strained relationship she had with her mother and what happened with her father and brother. Her mother had Dissociative Identity Disorder which made her difficult to deal with, her father had psychotic depression and starved himself to death, and her brother had schizophrenia which led him to hang himself after accusing their mother of “putting people inside him”.

Given Ellen’s mother’s manipulative nature Annie isn’t sure how she should be grieving. In a way she’s happy that she’s now free of her mother, but she’s also deeply upset by the loss. Because of her mixed feelings, when Annie’s husband Steve hears from the funeral home that Ellen’s grave has been desecrated he keeps the news from his wife.

Tragedy still looms over family though when Annie insists that her son Peter take Charlie with him to a school bar-be-cue not knowing it’s actually a party for the older school kids and not really somewhere that Charlie would be welcome. Peter leaves Charlie on her own so that he can go and get high with some of his friends only to be interrupted minutes later by Charlie who is entering anaphylactic shock due to her peanut allergy.

Panicking, Peter puts Charlie in the back of the car and frantically starts to make his way towards the nearest hospital. Charlie’s condition is worsening by the minute and she’s desperately trying to breathe, sticking her head out of the car window to try and force air into her lungs. Speeding down the road, Peter swerves suddenly to miss an animal in the road and the car heads towards to telephone pole, narrowly missing it. Charlie however isn’t so lucky and is decapitated.

Falling further and further into grief, Annie starts to take desperate measures to understand what it happening to her and her family. Heading back to the grief support group, she’s overcome and turns around in the car park but before she can leave she’s flagged down by a woman who introduces herself as Joan and tells Annie to come and talk to her if she needs it.

After Joan teaches Annie how to hold a séance, Annie is convinced that she’s been able to make contact with Charlie’s spirit and is communicating with her.

In reality what Annie has reached will tear apart the very fabric of her remaining family and unleash a terrible force upon the world.

Seeking Greatness, Missing The Mark

🎃Warning! Spoilers for Hereditary ahead👑

I hadn’t realised that I’d put down two Ari Aster films to watch this month (the other being Midsommar) and if I am honest one would have been enough.

Hereditary is Aster’s first outing as a big-screen director and writer and you can see what he’s trying to achieve, it’s just doesn’t quite manage to get there.

Charlie is shown as being “odd” — maybe touches of Tourette’s or OCD — but apart from chopping bird’s heads off with scissors there’s nothing overly evil about her. This might be intentional indicating that Paimon hasn’t reached his full power yet as he’s in a female body, or it could be Aster not wanting to fully show that Charlie is more than she seems to be.

But let’s contrast this with The Omen for a moment, which I think must have been an inspiration for Aster’s work. With Damien we never see him do anything demonic, he doesn’t kill anyone and he doesn’t walk around with glowing red eyes but we know he’s evil. He oozes it from every pore each time he’s on the screen.

You know something isn’t quite right with Damien even if you can’t put your finger on it but with Charlie she just comes across as a kookie kid with a tick and odd hobbies, there’s no underlying evil there, nothing to hint at things to come and nothing to tie her to Paimon.

And again, this might be intentional but I think it’s a missed opportunity. If we really thought there was something more going on with Charlie, something darker then her death would have been a relief — for the family and for the audience. We could have relaxed a little before the events of the last act of the film and this would have made the ensuing events even more disturbing and poignant.

And we should discuss Charlie’s death for a moment. I know this isn’t the way that Aster wanted the scene to come across but I found the entire decapitation scene and aftermath unintentionally hilarious to the point where I had to pause the film so I could compose myself.

The entire thing had been telegraphed (pun intended) since we had mention that the family never take an EpiPen with them despite Charlie’s terrible nut allergy, and then we see the pole with the symbol on it shoehorned into the foreground of a scene. I just knew what was coming, I just didn’t think it would be so blatant.

And can someone explain what happened after Peter went home? Did he literally just head to bed and lay there while his sister’s headless body sat in the car waiting for Annie to find it in the morning? Why didn’t Annie check on Peter and Charlie when she heard the car pull up? Especially as they were home early! My parents always checked everything was okay when I got home after borrowing the car — mainly, I suspect, to check I’d put petrol in it but the thought was there.

I know this family is dysfunctional (and that’s the point) but for no one to check the car was back, or Charlie or Peter were back, especially when Annie was worried Peter would be drinking is just bizarre and I found it hilarious.

The “Blink And You’ll Miss It” Problem

Aster lays breadcrumbs throughout the film from Ellen’s Paimon symbol necklace and writing on the walls of the house to Paimon’s symbol on the pole that will ultimately kill Charlie.

The problem is that we’re not given enough time to mentally take in what we’re seeing. I knew something was on the pole, I just didn’t have enough time to take in what it was.

Part of this is the quickness of the cuts between shots and this is a great technique for making people feel like there’s something they’re missing and they’re not quite sure what, that they really need to be paying attention or they’ll miss something important.

But I don’t think this is what they were aiming for, I think it’s that these scenes were framed for someone watching the film on a cinema screen and not a television screen. While that’s certainly an artistic choice you can make, if these scenes are integral to the core of your film then you need to allow people to actually see them! Needing to rewind the film because you’ve missed a visual clue takes you out of the story the director is tying to tell and it ruins the flow and impact of the film.

Similarly, I feel like there were more clues in the limited sets we had (the main one being the house) but I shouldn’t need to watch a film 2 or 3 times in order to fully get everything the director was trying to convey — that level of dissection if for cult classics, not for a first time director to assume their audience is willing to do which is somewhat arrogant to my mind.

Overall Hereditary is a good film and very well acted, I just felt that it was let down a little by a true lack of foreboding during the first couple of acts which took away the impact of the story somewhat.

Paimon Shaimon

Paimon is a real spirit who was one of the 72 demons summoned by King Solomon and in some ancient writings is one of the 9 demonic kings as the film mentions.

The problem is that we don’t know why they’re invoking him, what his powers are and why he’s a danger to the world.

Sure, he possesses Annie and gets her to saw her own head off, he causes Charlie’s death, immolates Steve and gets his followers to dig up Ellen’s body and cut her head off too — but to what end?

At the end of the film during the crowning ceremony we hear the disciples/acolytes/followers praising Peter-Paimon and asking him to:

Give us your knowledge of all secret things.
Bring us honor, wealth, and good familiars.
Bind all men to our will, as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to yours.

So all of this was so they could become rich, famous and bend people to their will?

At least with Damien, you understand that he’s an evil being, devil incarnate who is on Earth to subjugate man. But what about Paimon? Sure he might give his followers riches but what of those who don’t follow him? Is he going to make them all saw their own heads off too?

Without any real stakes in play outside the world of the Tree House, the end of the film becomes a bit of an anti-climax.

Acting Masterclass, Directorial Questions

Toni Collette is great in this film as an unravelling mother desperate to connect with her dead daughter.

Newcomer Milly Shapiro is excellent as the odd Charlie and I really think she could have done a more sinister turn if asked.

Gabriel Byrne Burn is reliable as ever as a husband who wants to believe and help his wife but has obviously been put through so much over the years thanks to Annie’s relationship with her mother that he’s just about reached the end of his rope and can’t take any more.

And then we come to Alex Wolff as Peter. I don’t have an issue with his performance as he acts what he’s asked to do very well, I do however have issues with how he’s asked to act. Wolff is a few years older than the character he’s being asked to play which is fine, except sometimes he looks too old.

There’s a world-weariness about him that doesn’t quite fit in with the fun-loving pot smoking teen he’s supposed to be. But then Aster goes the other way and completely infantilises the character with the way he’s sobbing and calling for his “Mommy” and it’s a really, really strange choice to make and confused the heck out of me.

Hereditary is well worth a watch whether you’re a fan of Ari Aster’s work or not, just be prepared to get close to the screen to see everything that’s going on or pause quite often to catch what you missed in the background.

Watch Hereditary if you miss your Granny and wish you had her headless corpse stashed in your attic too.

Where to Watch:

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