CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!
When I caught the matinee of Hereditary I was literally the only person in the theater. And, throughout the film I was constantly looking around for images in the dark, people hovering on the walls, and praying I wouldn’t hear a “tongue click.” Very seldom does a horror movie come along and leave me in a mind numbing emotional state , but that’s exactly what this movie has done. And it’s one of those films which takes days, weeks, or possibly even months to shake. And, almost a year later, this movie still has its hooks in me. This is a movie that one cannot possibly absorb watching only once. And that’s the reason I have waited so long to write an analysis about this film, because to truly appreciate Hereditary it requires multiple viewings. I bought the Bluray the very day it was released and I watched it once for entertainment again, and many times thereafter analytically while taking notes. This film is so full of symbolism, foreshadowing, callbacks, hidden clues, and twists and turns that it is immensely overwhelming. So, in lieu of a typical review (for there has been many written) I have decided to give a complete breakdown of this film.
Hereditary is Director Ari Aster’s feature film debut. He has directed many short films such as ‘The Strange Thing About the Johnsons,’ ‘Munchausen,’ and ‘C’est La Vie.’ just to name a few. Hereditary is the story centered around the Graham family. The film stars Toni Collette,(Muriels Wedding, The Sixth Sense, Little Miss Sunshine) as Annie, a miniature house designer, who tries so desperately to keep her family from falling apart in the face of insurmountable tragedies despite their dysfunctional and distant relationship. Her husband Steven, played by Gabriel Byrne (The End of Days, Point of No Return, and The Usual Suspects) seems to be the most grounded and reasonable member of the family. Alex Wolff, (The Naked Brothers Band series, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) portrays her son Peter, who is a typical teenage boy. And introducing Milly Shapiro who plays Annie’s daughter Charlie, who exhibits extremely bizarre behavior such as making odd figurines and randomly clicking her tongue.
First and foremost, the Graham family is damned from the very beginning. Their fate is sealed by a strategically designed plan that was set in motion years before the movie even begins. The families matriarch, Ellen Leigh (Annie’s mother) is the leader of a sinister cult in which she has conjured a demon called King Paimon and offered her granddaughter Charlie as a host. But, Paimon prefers a male host, so she crafted an insidious plan in order transfer him from Charlie’s body into her grandson Peters’ body.
As the movie opens the camera pushes in on a diorama of the house which is a replica of the Grahams home and morphs into the real house, focusing on Peter asleep in his room, which gives the audience the illusion that someone or something is staring inside. And as the movie progresses this becomes very symbolic. Ellen has just passed and Steve is getting Peter and Charlie ready for the funeral while Annie waits in the car. She holds a necklace with the symbol of Paimon. Steve finds Charlie asleep in the tree house and he tells her it’s too cold and she could catch pneumonia. She replies, “That’s okay.”
Annie delivers the eulogy at her mother’s funeral. She explains to the mourners how she feels that she is betraying her mother by saying how much of a private person she was with her private rituals, private friends, private anxieties, and how suspicious she would be that so many people attended her wake. But yet, Annie and the rest of the her family are the ones betrayed. As Annie continues with her condemnation, Charlie, while eating a candy bar, views her grandmother in the coffin. She looks over to see a man creepily smiling at her. And as the funeral goes on Charlie sits between Steve and Peter sketching in her drawing pad casually making clicking noises. At the end of the service, Charlie is eating the candy bar again. Both Steve and Annie ask her if it contains nuts because neither have an Epipen with them. Thus, establishing Charlie’s nut allergy.
Later that night as Annie tucks Charlie into bed she tells her that she was her mother’s favorite and she always wanted to feed her. Charlie said that her grandmother always wanted her to be a boy and asked Annie who was going to take care of her when she died. During the whole conversation Charlie never looks at Annie which insinuates there may be a distance between them. On the wall beside Charlie’s bed is the word:Satony. And further along into the movie the words Zasas and Liftoach Pandemonium appear. Satony and Zasas are related to the Necromancy (communication and summoning of the dead) and Liftoach (Hebrew for Open) Pandemonium (total chaos).
Afterwards, Annie is going through her mother’s things packed in a box. She opens a book of invocations and finds a letter addressed to her. The letter told her not despair about the terrible things that were to come because the sacrifice will pale to the rewards. Just as Annie is about to leave the room she turns off the light and her mother is standing in the darkness smiling at her. She flips the light back on and she has disappeared. Annie then turns a miniature of her holding Charlie as a baby and her mother standing beside the bed with one breast out, implying that Ellen breastfed Charlie.
The next day Charlie sits in class making a figure out of random things. The teacher tells her to put it away until after the quiz. Outside, a pigeon flies from out of nowhere and smashes into the window. While the students are appalled, Charlie remains calm while focusing on a pair of scissors on the teachers desk. After class Charlie finds the bird laying on top of some hedges. As she eats a candy bar she cuts off the birds head with the scissors. Then from across the street, a mysterious woman waves at Charlie.
In class, the teacher is discussing Sophocles’ The Oracle of Heracles, which relays a magnificent parallel between Heracles and Peter, about whether it is more tragic or less tragic for someone to have no control over his fate. Not paying attention to the lesson, Peter stares at Bridget, the girl who he is obsessively crushing on. The teacher asks what was Heracles’ fatal flaw. Bridget, answers: “Arrogance. Because he refused to recognize all the signs that were revealed through the entire play.” Peter receives a text from a friend sitting beside him asking if wants to smoke a bowl during break. Another student claims that it would be more tragic because all the characters never had any hope. “They’re all like pawns in this horrible hopeless machine.” Basically, this all points to the fact that Peter believes that he is in control, and sadly, will never have a choice.
As Annie is working on a miniature, the screen on the computer beside her displays the site, “Norms on Discerning Presumed Apparitions.” Obviously, she is searching for an explanation of how or why she saw her mother in the dark corner. Later, Annie notices that her mother’s bedroom door is open. She looks inside and sees a triangle burned into the floor with one leg of the bed inside one of the corners. This triangle symbol will resurface later in the film. Annie has Steve to lock the door. Steve is informed by the cemetery that Ellen’s grave has been desecrated and chooses not to tell Annie. This is the catalyst, as for the cults part, to execute the first phase of the ritual.
Later that night, Annie attends a Bereavement Support Group where she divulges intimate details about her family, from her mothers DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and Dementia, to her fathers psychotic depression and death from starvation, to her brothers schizophrenia and suicide at age 16. He hung himself because, in a suicide note, he blamed Ellen for trying to put people inside him. This is referring to Ellen trying to incarnate Paimon inside her son. Annie explains how she and her mothers relationship was estranged and had very little communication with her until she needed hospice care. She never allowed her any contact with Peter. When Charlie was born, probably through guilt, she relented and gave Charlie to her mother. In which Annie states, “She immediately stabbed her hooks into.” She feels that her family is completely doomed and she is to blame, and that she is blamed.
In the bedroom, Peter fires up a bong in front of the window facing the treehouse. He receives a text about a party later on. From outside, a cult member is discreetly watching Peter as steam expels from their breath.
Charlie sits at a desk in her room making another strange figurine while eating pieces of candy. She clicks her tongue. A weird light appears and floats around the room. Charlie watches as it forms into a sphere and flies out the window. She stands on her bed and stares out the window. Holding the pigeons severed head, she walks outside. There is a set of adult footprints leading toward the woods. From a distance, Charlie sees a lady sitting in front of a fire in a white dress. This is Ellen. The cult is about to burn her body.
Peter steps inside Annie’s workshop and asks to borrow the car because he wants to go the party. He tells her it’s a school barbecue at a friends house. Annie insists that he take Charlie with him.
On the way to the party the car passes a telephone pole with same symbol from Ellen and Annie’s necklaces carved into it by the cult. Charlie clicks her tongue and Peter looks at her reflection in the rear view. He stares at her face. There is a call back to to this later in the film. Peter and Charlie arrive at the party where teenagers are drinking. In the kitchen a girl rapidly chops nuts for a cake. Peter and Bridget go into another room to smoke some weed. Peter makes Charlie stay with the others and tells her get a piece of cake. Inside the bedroom a movie depicting a guillotine is playing. This is a foreshadowing of things to come. After Charlie eats the cake, she begins to have an allergic reaction. Peter quickly leaves the party and rushes her to the hospital. Charlie gasps for air in the back seat and places her head out the window. Peter swerves to miss a deer carcass in the road, which was placed there intentionally by cult members, and the pole with the symbol decapitates Charlie.
Continued in Movie Analysis : Complete Breakdown of Hereditary Part Two of Three
