Hereditary
(2018) 127 Min.
Rated: R (gore, nudity)
Country: USA
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★★
After the death of the matriarch, a family struggles to understand and unravel dark family secrets.
Synopsis:
Ellen, the mother of Annie (Collette), has passed away. She was the matriarch of the family. Her daughter, Annie, is a miniaturist artist. Annie is married to Steve (Byrne). They have two children: the eldest is their 16-year-old son, Peter (Wolff), and their eccentric and reserved 13-year-old daughter, Charlie (Shapiro). The family lives in a large home with a small tree house outside surrounded by a forest in Utah.
The film starts as the family gathers and attends the viewing for Ellen’s body. Annie gives a eulogy where she remarks on how her mother was a private person who had private rituals, private friends and private anxieties. Annie goes on to describe her mother as being a person who could be cold but also at times loving. During the eulogy, Charlie is drawing in a sketchbook and her father, Steve, asks her to put the book away. Later on, Charlie stares at Ellen’s body and eats chocolate. Her parents ask if it contains nuts, to which she is allergic and she shakes her head “no”.
Back at home, Annie works in her studio on her miniatures and replicates a scene with a doctor and her mother in a hospice bed. She has six and a half months to finish her work before a show in a gallery.
Annie goes to wish Charlie goodnight and talks to her for a bit. She reassures Charlie that she was her grandmother’s favorite. She also tells her that as a baby Ellen wouldn’t allow Annie to feed Charlie because she wanted to feed the baby. Charlie feels Ellen wanted her to be a boy. Charlie also worries about who will take care of her. Annie reassures her that she will or her father.
After Annie leaves Charlie’s room she goes through a box of her mother’s things. Inside a book on spiritualism she finds a handwritten note by Ellen to her. The note reads:
“My darling, dear, beautiful Annie,
Forgive me all the things I could not tell you. Please don’t hate me and try not to despair your losses. You will see in the end that they were worth it.
Our sacrifice will pale next to the rewards.
Love, Mommy”
Annie returns the book to the box and turns off the light. In the darkness she sees a figure of her mother. In horror she turns on the light and the figure vanishes. Annie, seeing a model she made of her mother trying to nurse her baby, turns it around and faces it away from her sight.
At school, Charlie finds a dead pigeon that had slammed into her class window prior. She cuts its head off with scissors and pockets the head. Across the street a woman watches her. Peter, meanwhile, has trouble paying attention in school as he texts his friends about smoking pot later.
A week passes since the funeral and Steve gets a phone call from the cemetery. Ellen’s grave has been desecrated. When Annie asks about the phone call, Steve lies that it was just billing questions. Annie in turn lies to Steve telling him that she’s going to see a movie, instead she goes to a group therapy session for grief recovery.
At the therapy session Annie reveals that shew as estranged from her mother. She tells them her mother had dissociative identity disorder and dementia. Her father died while Annie was a baby of starvation from his psychotic depression. Her older brother hung himself when he was 16 and suffered from schizophrenia. He left a note accusing his mother of putting people inside him. Annie goes on to describe her mother as manipulative. She said she had no contact with her mother while she had her first child, Peter. Annie says she gave her mother her daughter, Charlie. Annie describes herself as feeling guilty and wanting to not put more stress on her family.
At home, Charlie sees a flash of light and feels compelled to go outside. She walks outside holding the pigeon head and sees a fire and a person in a field. Annie finds Charlie and reprimands her for going outside without shoes or a coat. She insists that Charlie go with her brother Peter to a party he was invited to. Peter begrudgingly takes Charlie in one of the family cars to the party.
Charlie and Peter show up to a large house party full of teens drinking. Peter asks one of his female classmates if she’d like to smoke weed with him. She invites him upstairs and he tells Charlie to wait downstairs and grab a slice of chocolate cake. While Peter smokes upstairs, Charlie eats the cake which is full of nuts. Charlie starts to have trouble breathing and finds her brother. Peter puts Charlie in the car and drives while high.
Charlie is gasping for breath as Peter reassures her that they’re on their way to the hospital. He’s speeding upwards of 80 miles per hour. Charlie rolls down the window and sticks her head out as she’s gasping. Suddenly Peter sees a large deer lying in the road and swerves to avoid it. The car veers against a telephone pole and decapitates Charlie in an instant. Peter slams the brakes on the car, realizing what just occurred. He breathes for a moment, refuses to look in the rear-view mirror and then drives home in a zombie-like state. He exits the car and goes to his room to lie down.
In the morning, Annie can be heard leaving the house and her screams of anguish fill the air upon discovering the scene in the car. For a moment Charlie’s bloody head is shown covered in ants lying in the road. Steve is shown trying to comfort Annie as she cries in anguish on the floor over Charlie’s death.
Charlie’s funeral comes and passes. Annie has trouble dealing with it and sleeps in the treehouse. Meanwhile, Peter feels himself having moments of choking like Charlie did.
Annie attempts to rejoin the grief therapy group and encounters a woman named Joan who befriends her. Annie confides in Joan about how she used to sleepwalk and once found herself covered from head to toe in paint thinner as well as Peter and Charlie. She was holding a match that was about to be lit as she woke up. She feels Peter blames her for that.
Back home Annie has made a model replica of the accident. Tension is building in the family as Steve and Annie don’t sleep in the same bed anymore and Peter keeps to himself. During a family dinner, Annie screams at Peter for not apologizing or talking about the accident. Peter asks her why she won’t think about how she forced Charlie to go to the party. Steve intervenes to stop the argument.
While out on a supply run at the art store, Annie runs into Joan. Joan convinces Annie to come to her home where the two of them perform a seance and contact Joan’s dead grandson. A glass moves and chalk writes on a board. Joan gives Annie a sheet with an incantation and tells her to try it whenever she is ready. Annie goes home troubled.
Annie wakes up in the middle of the night to follow a trail of ants to Peter’s room. The ants are covering Peter’s face. Suddenly she hears Peter’s voice. She’s sleepwalking and wakes standing at the foot of his bed. He asks her why she’s scared of him and Annie admits she never wanted to be his mother because she was scared. She says she didn’t feel like a mother but was pressured by Ellen. She tells him she tried to miscarry but gave birth anyway. The two of them are wet in paint thinner and the sound of a match and flames is heard. Annie wakes up in bed, having dreamt the entire scene.
Annie gathers Steve and Peter and has them conduct a seance to contact Charlie. A glass moves while the three of them touch it. Annie starts to talk in Charlie’s voice. Pater is frightened and Steve throws water on Annie to break her trance.
Peter sees light flashing at school and is upset that it’s a spirit coming for him. Annie destroys some models in frustration and Steve sleeps on the couch in frustration.
Later Annie sees Charlie’s sketch book filling with drawings on its own and Peter has a nightmare that he sees Charlie in his room. Annie takes the sketchbook and attempts to burn it in the fireplace, however her sleeve catches on fire at the same time. She pulls the book out of the fire and puts out the fire, which puts out the fire on her sleeve.
After trying to talk to Joan, who is unavailable, Annie notices that Joan’s doormat looks similar to ones her mother made. She looks through her mothers belongings and finds a bookmarked entry on a spirit named King Paimon. She finds photos of her mother and Joan together as well as pictures of her in a white wedding gown, showered in gold coins by friends. Annie is shocked.
Annie goes up into the attic and finds the body of her mother rotting and decapitated with a symbol written in blood above her. Meanwhile, at school, Peter hears the tongue pops made by Charlie and he slams his face into his desk, bleeding and screaming.
Steve brings Peter home from school. Annie is crying and desperately trying to tell Steve about the body in the attic and the sketchbook. Annie asks Steve to toss the sketchbook in the fireplace. Steve refuses, believing that Annie has gone mad. Annie throws the book into the fire but Steve lights on fire completely and dies. Annie is shocked, when suddenly a flash of light washes over her and she turns calm.
Peter wakes up from a nap in a darkened house. He is alone and searches for his parents. Peter finds his father’s charred corpse in the living room. His mother, meanwhile, is hiding on the ceiling. She surprises him from the shadows and chases him through the house. Peter is panicking and retreats into the attic, locking the entrance before his mother can get in. Peter looks around the attic and notices a spot where a body once lay. In the center is a photo of him. Annie appears behind him and he sees her. She is slicing through her neck with a piano wire. Peter turns around and sees three nude people smiling at him. He runs through the attic window and falls to the ground unconscious. A shadow leaves him and a light comes to his body and enters him.
Peter awakens and sees Annie’s headless body float into the treehouse outside. He walks into the tree house and sees a nude people kneeling towards a statue that has Charlie’s rotting head atop it wearing a crown. Peter also sees the bodies of his mother and grandmother kneeling towards him. Joan removes the crown from Charlie’s head and places it onto Peters. She calls him Charlie and tells him that they, the cult, have corrected their mistake in giving Paimon the female body of Charlie and now Peter is the host of King Paimon. Joan pledges herself to Paimon so that he may give them wisdom and riches. The group cries “Hail Paimon!” as the film ends.
Review:
This is director Ari Asters first full length film and it is excellent!
The film begins as a family drama. Toni Collette doing an Oscar-worthy performance as Annie. Her tortured mother character is desperate to stop a plan that has unknowingly already been put into motion. Gabriel Bryne also does well as Steve, the level-headed father of the family who tries to rationalize the chaos surrounding him.
The film evokes such an effective eerie tone through scenes that are disturbing but also subtly placed clues. The sign of King Paimon is peppered throughout the film and it’s only through multiple viewings do the details in this film really shine.
Because the first hour of this film is primarily a family drama, it might seem dull to some horror fans. Indeed, this is a slow burn at first. Once the chaos starts to mount, however, it really ramps up the gore and nightmare fuel.
I wholeheartedly recommend this film to anyone who can take a slow burn and would like a disturbing tale of the occult.