Hereditary — general discussion thread — SPOILERS

Sorry forgot to add an image.

By the way there are some incredibly powerful scenes in this film. One in particular with Alex Wolff in a car shook me to the core.

Is Toni as brilliant as everyone is saying? I’ve always liked her, and hope she’s good.

She’s amazing.

I should also point out that, any disappointment about the marketing aside, this is a movie that stays with you. It’s the antithesis of the superhero film whose plot you’ve forgotten by the time you exit the theater.

I saw it today. Alex Wolf and Toni Collette are mesmerizing in their roles. I was, honestly, kind of disappointed with where the story (a long film, but never boring) went in the end. It was damn near perfect until the last 10 minutes IMO.

I liked how it all tied together r6 ...

SPOILER

... the way all of the events in the film are shown to be the unfolding of a predestined event, the moving of the demon from the unsatisfactory female vessel to the male.

Why R6 do you think all the female family members end up decapitated? It must be part of the demons ritual or manifestation that the female bloodline of his vessel must be headless.

SPOILER

Honestly, R7, I was very confused about parts of the ending so have done reading up online this afternoon since I saw it. The father was also decapitated so I don’t know if it’s a female thing.

**Spoiler**

I don’t recall the father being decapitated. He was burnt to a crisp. I think some reviewer got it wrong in saying that about him.

It’s a very upsetting film I think. That might have something to do with the low CinemaScore as well.

The daughter looks like an old lady, what a strange looking child.

I recommend "It Follows", the very hot Daniel Zovatto from HBO's "Here & Now" is in it. "It Follows" has been on cable for the past year or so.

It Follows is very good, but not quite at the level of Heriditary.

Alex Wolff kind of pings in interviews to me. Anyone share that opinion?

It is made clear the demon needs the male of the bloodline to manifest himself...which is why the father from another family line is disposable. The women from the bloodline must be used as sacrificial blood? Or something.

Surprised feminists haven't keyed in on this and pounced on the movie. I don't mean this to be an arch, either, it bears analysis...

The director has family issues!

check out his fucked up student movie -- you can see 2 things, he has technical mastery and he likes fucked up families...actually third: his finales/last acts don't live up to the build-up...

It follows is a good indie teen horror movie. I really enjoyed it.

But I agree with r12 that Hereditary is something altogether different.

[quote]It Follows is very good, but not quite at the level of Heriditary.

Why even compare, they are both very different types of horror films. "It Follows" had little gore and very little about the film was a typical horror film.

They’re both horror movies. I guess that’s why. And because someone else did?

It's basically Rosemary's Baby meets The Babadook. Where Rosemary's Baby was at heart a movie about an abusive marriage, Hereditary is about mental illness and post-traumatic guilt in the family like the Babadook.

I definitely recommend it, but you really appreciate the brilliance of Roman Polanski and how he paces his two similar movies, Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion. Hereditary simply needed better editing.

Collette gives the performance of her career. Shame she probably won't get the Oscar because of genre prejudice.

I'm assuming the director is family.

....

I don’t reslly see the babadook in this film, as the monster in that is really the manifestation of the dark side of the mothers grief and exhaustion about having to raise this child — whose birth caused her husband’s death — alone. There’s no reification of emotion in Hereditary — the demon is not conjures from the mother’s pain, but the other way around, the mothers pain is caused by the demon.

Rosemary’s Baby is the strongest vibe but tonally the movie also harkens back to The Shining (the menacing solitude of the setting and the gradual feeling that an ancient evil is predetermined) and Don’t Look Now.

TOni C is SO good in this.

If you see the demon as a metaphor (as demons usually are in these films), you don't have to look much further than the title to know that the the burden of mental illness and having passed that down to your children is part of the underlying horror that propels this film. It's not a coincidence that the mother ashamedly reveals that both her father and her brother died of mental illness at the group therapy session.

Toni’s brother committed suicide when he was 16, leaving a note that said his mother (the head cultist / witch) was trying to put “people inside him”.

This was not the first go around of males from the bloodline hosting demons. Only Toni’s brother committed suicide first.

R19 Yes, I think he is...

So the demon was in the daughter first? Did the daughter kill herself intentionally?

I think the cult engineered her death so the demon could properly transfer.

They absolutely did kill Charlie, yes.

Far and away A24’s largest opening to date.

[quote]In fourth is the excellent start for A24's Hereditary, which brought in an estimated $13 million this weekend. Prior to the film's opening, tracking expectations were in the high single digits, but Mojo's pre-weekend forecast saw much greater potential, anticipating a debut $12 million or higher. Budgeted at a reported $10 million, Hereditary was not only A24's widest release, debuting in 2,964 theaters, the $13 million debut is the studio's largest opening by a wide margin, topping the $8.8 million opening for The Witch in 2016. The film did receive a disappointing "D+" CinemaScore from opening day audiences, however A24's The Witch received a meager "C-" before ending its run with over $25 million on a $4 million budget. Hereditary played to an audience that was 58% male vs. 42% female this weekend with 74% of the overall audience coming in under 34 years of age.

The New York Times review pretty much agrees that the movie is good, but still a bit disappointing -- Scott doesn't come out and say it, but he seems to be referring to the hype that A24 built around the movie.

How do we feel about the little girl? She's very odd looking -- was she cast as the first demon vessel for that reason?

Charlie will brilliant casting. Much scarier than the demon child in The Omen.

Some great reveals from this interview with the director.

I did not realize Charlie was using the decapitated bird's head to build a diorama of the scene we see in the closing. Also, that's a great callback to The Exorcist where Regan made the bird figurine that foreshadows Pazuzu's form.

Yes, you see the bird head drawn in her book with the crown on it, but I didn't connect that until just now, r33. I like movies that insert things like that in the narrative -- it makes them interesting to watch repeatedly.

In fact I can't wait to watch this again. I probably won't see it in the theater again, but I'd like to see it, especially without the cackling latinos sitting right next to me.

(I think it might be a cultural thing, but this isn't the first time some Latin people have guffawed through a horror movie, which for me sort of ruins the vibe.)

I thought the seance scene was really poorly written and Colette's performance interesting but not so great as the hype would have you believe. Question: what happened to her character at the end?

She cut her own head off, R35.

R36 but wasn't that her getting lifted up into the treehouse? What did that mean?

On a scale 1 - 10, how scary is this movie?

Mmm, I’d say about a four, with maybe occasional spikes to a six. It’s more about mental illness and how awful families are to each other and a creeping sort of dread until the end when it kind of goes off the rails to straight up horror, which doesn’t quite work. It’s definitely being overpraised, although Collette is all in and convincing. She’s not going to be awarded anything for this though.

[quote]She cut her own head off, [R35].

Yes, Annie is possessed as soon as her husband is incinerated. You can see the dramatic change. (The one thing I haven't been able to work out is whether the husband was possessed before that. I mean, why else would he catch and fire when the book was burned? And why did the devil fly into her when he was dying? That's the one element of the movie that still perplexes me.)

Then, possessed, she pursues her son and eventually is able to gain access to the attic. Levitating, she is forced to cut off her own head with a piece of sharp wire. This is what finally pushes him over the edge and he jumps from the attic. His soul leaves his body and the malevolent spirit that's been hovering around through most of the movie enters him. Still possessed, the headless Annie levitates up into the treehouse and joins her also-headless corpse of a mother in worshipping the incarnate devil, King Paimon. Which is pretty fucking creepy. It raises the question again of why the women on the possessed boy's bloodline all have to be headless.

Sounds like "Burnt Offerings", or no?

If you see the movie as being about mental illness, you're not properly understanding it. That's the received wisdom, but it's mostly coming from people who are uncomfortable with the idea of horror being good, and this movie is good. For them, horror is just schlock like Friday the 13th. (They do the same thing with The Shining. "It's not really horror, it's a genre I like." LOL!)

So instead of all the pain and anguish being caused by demonic prophesy, these people have to say "it's really a parable of mental illness, that gets spoiled by it turning into straight horror at the end."

Nope, it's straight horror from the start. Just very well done and convincing. These people are not mentally ill, they are being sucked into a violent, destructive supernatural vortex. The movie's conclusion confirms that.

R42 = idiot

The director says in the Variety article that the demon Paimon was in Charlie the entire time, that’s why the grandmother was so “close” to her. It then passed to the son.

I'll take that as your eloquent concession speech, r43.

Loved it a lot up until the very end. Then it became goofballs. The accident scene/aftermath was probably 5 of the most harrowing minutes I've scene in quite some time. The dream sequence was also a gut punch. SO good until the incomprehensible wrap up.

I loved this film. I didn't see any marketing and knew nothing about it, only going because I'd heard it was a horror film.

It wasn't a horror, but I think it was better than that - the constant anxiety and dread was so powerful and it was shocking. I have never seen anything quite like it before and I will be going to see it again. I loved the way that the mental illness aspect was masking the actual story.

Two old people walked out after the car accident, so just as well they didn't stay. They probably thought they'd seen the worst of it!

The woman I went with almost walked out after the car accident too. It is rather sudden and upsetting.

What was in the road that caused the son to swerve toward the utility pole in the accident? It was something white - the grandmother's body?

I wonder the same thing r49 -- I've seen the film three times now and I still haven't gotten a handle on what it is in the road. The grandmother's body would be perfect though. The grave had already been desecrated at that point, and the telephone pole has the symbol of Paimon on it. I guess we'll have to wait until the bluray comes out to pause it and see, it's an incredibly fast edit.

R49 and R50 I thought it was just a dead deer (or moose) on the road.

I should have not anticipated that it would be scary as others told me. It was a boring movie that was not scary at all. We were joking and laughing. We were grasping at straws trying to find it scary but would end up laughing instead.

Yeah it was a large dead animal, which we are to understand was placed there by the cult (or even the demon himself).

R52 sits transfixed during the Transformers movies.

So was Charlie/Paimon really having an allergic reaction to the nuts in the cake or was she/it faking it so they could carry out the whole elaborate scenario? Paimon would be such a Datalounge troll if that was true.

It's hard to say, r55, but it had already been established that she was allergic to nuts before the party scene, and then there was the dramatic cutting of the nuts to make the cake, so I think it's more that the cult set it up to get her to the party and get her to eat the cake. That sort of manipulation probably required the intervention of the demon itself.

I really found it odd that a group of teenagers would actually be baking a cake during a party. That being said-I didn't find the movie scary, but there is such a sense of dread hanging over the entire thing that it works. Several of the images are hard to shake (the ants, Collette slipping wraith-like out of Peter's room,Collette banging her head on the attic door), but the tone is so wildly uneven from the slow burn through 4/5 of the movie to the full on onslaught last 10 minutes. I wish the headless body floating up the ladder had been cut (it really looks silly-perhaps actually climbing the stairs?), the statue in the treehouse should have been more rudimentary looking (almost a wicker man homage) and that entire voiceover was so expository that it kind of ruined so much. If peter was now fully the vessel of Paemon, he obviously wouldn't need to be told all that shit which was obviously for the benefit of the audience. Brilliant but flawed.

R56 Re When Annie and Peter finally have the argument about what happened, Peter asks Annie accusingly why she was insistent on Charlie attending the party, Annie couldn't answer , so it seems like the whole thing was set up for the accident to occur.

R57, my teenaged niece (16) and her friends, male and female, bake at parties all the time. I thought it was odd the first time I heard of it. But you bake and then eat what you make. It’s apparently a thing to do.

Thanks, R59. Kids today!

I'm waiting on The Witch but I trust OP. For me, nothing can surpass The Exorcist or The Blair Witch. Last night on Netflix I watched I Am The Prettiest Thing in The House. Had to take a Xanax and hoped to sleep. Ugly actress, slow, the usual. I started riffing it I was so frustrated. Looked it up got same reviews.

I want to be scared. I want to think to think about the film for days. American The Ring got ruined for me in the end with the TV crawl.

So is there really anything? Am I going to have to do this myself on a cheap budget? Help from OP w/suggestions.

P.S- Blair Witch was exceptional in that you never knew what the damned thing was. That's genius.

Was that supposed to make any sense, R61?

The story is the typically overly-complicated soap opera that Millennials seem to need to keep their attention and ends up just being laughable. All of these movies under discussion (except maybe Rosemary's Baby) are juvenile and boring next to Jack Clayton's horror masterwork [italics] The Innocents [/italics].

Wait, I thought millennials needed jump cuts and quick edits. That is not this, but I guess you needed to feel superior to someone.

I think the movie is a mess of borrowed parts and pastiche from other, better horror movies (The Exorcist 3, Stir of Echoes) and tv shows (True Detective season one), and the emotional truth or metaphor of the movie just doesn't hold. The movie Lights Out went for more cheap scares but actually sustained the metaphor of inheriting mental illness from the mother (played by Maria Bello). Lights Out for the win on this subject matter.

Shtir of Echoesh

Thanks, Liza. Netflix isn't playing The Witch but a friend has it.

So I'm gonna go w/It Follows and other recommendations . Some higher level souls said Get Out was a disappointment.

It was a supernatural entity that caused him to swerve--the cultists ere in charge from the beginning, and killed the daughter so Pazuzu (or whatever his name was) could enter the son.

Watched a crappy Korean horror film about some Japanese guy in the woods. Awful. Paranormal Experience, all of them were greenlit manifestations by a schlocky Israeli Spielberg supported. Complete garbage.

Paimon/Charlie had a human body, or else the decaptitation would not have killed her. So the allergy to nuts was real and was part of Paimon's human host's frailty.

No Country For Old Men was a fine thriller.

I find the actor who plays the son, Peter, weirdly attractive. Except for that horrible mole by his nose.

[quote]are juvenile and boring next to Jack Clayton's horror masterwork [italics] The Innocents [/italics].

A milquetoast snoozefest of the sort that terrifies people also scared by the movie Rebecca. LOL!

And the tag is "italic", Rose, not "italics".

[quote] I Am The Prettiest Thing in The House.

You mean I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House. lol

It's mumblegore basically. I like movies like that but they are not to everyone's taste. I enjoy the very slow burn pictures.

R54 transformers movies are scary?

No, Rose, that's the point.

The point is that your jokes need some work.

I think it's been established that this movie is NOT a metaphor for anything regarding mental illness, even by the director himself. It is straight up horror that is meant to play as it is seen. The grandmother uses male members of her bloodline to bring the vessel for the demon to earth, period. If you want to look at that as a mental illness, fine, but, in the world of the film, it is perfectly fine and obviously, actually occurs. I also wasn't aware that movies were in a contest with each other and "Lights Out" was seen and forgotten.

Obviously it's not a metaphor INSIDE the film, r78, but when people write and think about Art they tend to think of things in those terms. Or at least curious people do.

Who said the nut allergy was fake, R70? I like to look on the fact that Charlie is seen devouring the cake like she hadn't eaten in 5 years as the demon trying to cause Charlie's death in order to escape her body and then, when it was possible they would make it to the hospital, the road distraction was produced. It has also been theorized that the coven was controlling the actions of the family all along, which is why Annie was so insistent on Charlie going to the party and Peter was so insistent on Charlie eating the cake while being unaware of its ingredients.

Take it up with the director, R79. Sometimes an apple is just an apple.

Stop r77, you’re going to make me cry.

What I don't understand about the film is... why did the demon/cult, whatever, let Charlie live for so long anyway? Why didn't the grandmother just kill her while she was alive? Was the grandmother trying to "protect" her or something? Did I miss something?

They wanted the demon to be in a man's body so that it could use it's powers (remember Charlie was saying that her grandmother wanted her to be a boy), but they couldn't get access to Charlie's brother, because the grandmother was kept away from him, so I guess the grandmother was just protecting Charlie until it was convenient to take the brother.

Fucking Hilarious ....

Spoilers

I don't know why but I found it hilarious when the little girl hit the pole. Everyone in the theater gasped and then fell silent as I was biting my lip hard while trying not to laugh. I looked at my boyfriend and he was smiling,too. I guess that is why we are together.

I also chortled. It was very South Park.

He swerves on the road to miss hitting a dead buck. In the "Mother's Day" trailer for the movie they show it, and if you pause it you can see the feet and the antlers. What I really don't understand is how the demon entered Gabriel Byrne so he would burn up in the fire when he wasn't a male member of the bloodline-it made absolutely no sense and I don't think anyone has explained it yet.

so many spoilers have been released, by the time I saw it , it seemd to drag, but omg very well acted. of course toni is gr8, but alex wolff is brilliant, I felt bad for the daughter, were the producers taking advantage of her eccentric looks, ,, she was a terrific prescence onscreen . she has a bright future

murky plot, screams see me again so u can understand it better....

very edgy at times

is it visually sposed to be kind of jerky? or was it the copy they used in the theatre we saw it in. maybe it was for dramatic effect.

???

why dint they run for their lives an git outta that haunted dam house??

most of it was super slow

but some of it was WOW

I found myself most fascinated by the cult. Maybe in this day and age of sequels and prequels we'll get one about the history of the cult!!

Not sure if someone mentioned this yet - Why was the whole family so heedless about the daughters potentially fatal peanut allergy. When she was eating at the funeral they mentioned not having an epi pen, and then when she was experiencing anaphylactic shock at the party I thought surely they would keep one in the car, but no.

OMG the last fifteen minutes scared the shit outta me

R94 Well, and you'd think the kid would notice that the cake was filled with fucking walnuts. It's not like it was a few well concealed nuts! But I guess the demon was trying to kill the kid anyway... like, was Charlie 100% Paimon? Or did she have free will at all? It's probably best to not think about the plot too much.

The dog kinda wandered in and out of the film. Was that necessary? At one point I wondered if the dog was killed in the car accident.

'ive looked at clouds from both sides now....'

brilliant

DONT SEE THIS MOVIE, U WILL HAVE TO SLEEP WITH THE LIGHTS ON...

I gotta go watch some episodes of Southern Charm after seeing this creep fest...

[R94] Well, and you'd think the kid would notice that the cake was filled with fucking walnuts

It wasn't. The knife she used for the cake had been used just recently for CHOPPNG walnuts to make something else, and that tainted the cake. You misunderstood the story.

It was a shit film. A waste of time and Collette's talent.

Classic ghost story, but there were some long boring stretches of film for sure...

man,,, toni tore up the scenery:::tour d farce...

luved the wack a doodle ending

mr wolff is awesome, alwys dug his style

Yeah, that ending of Lights Out with Bello offing herself was quite upsetting, R65.

R100 Really? I thought they were chopping the nuts to put in the cake. Why else would you chop a ton of nuts while making a cake?

I don't think that was necessarily clear, R100. I thought the walnuts were in the cake as well-not that they have to show everything but it's really rather deceptive to show them chopping nuts, making a cake, and then expecting you to think that the nuts weren't part of the cake. And seriously, what the hell kind of high school party was this where kids are baking cakes and making other desserts that call for walnuts chopped by hand? High school parties are sure different today then when I was a kid.

I think the walnuts were in the cake.

[quote]  and you'd think the kid would notice that the cake was filled with fucking walnuts.

I assumed she was mentally challenged hence the conversation about who would take care of her when Toni died and the fact that she was having an anaphylactic episode and sat deinking water instead of going immmediately to her brother.

I think the demon was causing her to eat the cake (she was devouring it rather than just leisurely eating it). After all, she didn't even want it and knew of her allergy. Remember, the demon was trying to get rid of her as well in order to get a male host.

Ann Dowd should have had for screen time.

The nuts were in the cake, the screenplay describes it that way.

was it mean of them to use this poor challenged gal to play Charlie? kinda mean I say.

loved her tho, awesome actor

The actress who played Charlie was a Broadway actor and she has a Tony r110

She’s not a retard in real life

" His soul leaves his body and the malevolent spirit that's been hovering around through most of the movie enters him."

I didn't get that impression. From the look on his face he appears totally resigned to his terrible fate, but not possessed. And the look on his face is one of utter despair; he doesn't look demonic at all. He looks heartbroken and I guess he is; his entire family is dead he's been chosen as a vessel to house a demon.

I thought one of the most horrifying things in the movie was that "cluck' sound the truly hideous looking Charlie makes with her mouth. Her brother Peter hears it repeatedly in the car as he takes her to the party. And he hears it again in his bedroom...after she's dead. Yes, it's horrifying.

I just read an interview with the writer. Charlie was always Paemon,, from the minute she was born-there was no "inner Charlie", therefore, Peter IS Paemon, he is not Peter resigning himself to the fact that he's hosting Paemon.

If Peter IS the demon at the end he looks like a very depressed demon. Anyway, that movie is so convoluted and difficult to understand that there are several websites with articles entitled "Explaining the Ending of Hereditary" and "Hereditary Ending Explained: What the hell was that?" and "Hereditary Ending Explained", and so on. I saw it today. That movie really does need explaining.

And Charlie seemed happy go lucky to you, R114?

The unattractive cast hurt its appeal, that's why the movie bombed at the box office. I think it would've been more successful if better-looking actors had played the father and son. They could have kept Collette for her nonstop histrionics and the odd, rodent-faced girl since she's bumped off early.

The problem with this movie, and many movies today, is there's no character for the audience to care about or want to identify with.

[quote]antlers. What I really don't understand is how the demon entered Gabriel Byrne so he would burn up in the fire when he wasn't a male member of the bloodline

Well, while the Gabriel Byrne burning up part is the one open end for me, the burning of the book does not mean the burning of the demon. Because the book DOES burn and the demon DOES NOT die (as indeed it cannot until the end of days).

The book is tied to a mortal soul somehow but we don’t know how.

Ummmm, R116. The movie is not a bomb, but thanks for playing anyway.

[quote]The problem with this movie, and many movies today, is there's no character for the audience to care about or want to identify with.

That character is actually Peter. That’s why when Annie finds Charlie’s corpse in the car we experience it from Peter’s perspective.

"And Charlie seemed happy go lucky to you."

She seemed to me like a very fucked up child. You don't have to be demon possessed to be the way she was, although she did have the look of some kind of monster. That kid is one of the homeliest child actors I've ever seen.

Exactly right r118–a solid earner for A24:

[quote]A24′s Hereditary earned another $2.202 million (-57%) on its second Friday, setting the stage for a $6.6m (-51%) weekend and $26.761m ten-day total. That’s a pretty decent hold for an arthouse horror flick, especially one that got a D+ from Cinemascore on opening night. It would seem that the positive press coverage for the Toni Collette flick, which at least lets viewers know what they are in for, is helping buffer the drop. At this rate, the $10m Sundance acquisition could flirt with a $40m+ domestic total, making it A24′s second-biggest domestic grosser behind Lady Bird ($49m).

Yeah r120 I’m with you. That clicking bizarre pigeon head snipping child was pretty fucking far away from happy go lucky.

Clicking = clucking

Charlie wasn't demon possessed-she WAS the demon. There was never a Charlie, the vessel was born with the demon's soul so Charlie acted the way she acted because that is the way the demon acted,.

That was my point, R122.

Movie has made over 22M on a low budget. For A24 standards this thing has some really solid legs, especially as a horror film. See link.

Has really got to be one of the worst, dumbest movies that I think I've ever seen. I beg y'all to not waste your money. You'll be sorry.

Putting tasteless losers like R127 on ignore.

Can’t get behind that r124. Charlie was given to Annie’s mother and she put the demon into the girl, like in holding pattern. Then they killed her to releaae him.

At least that’s how I see it.

I didn't see Peter as being traumatised in the last scene or miserable. He just had the same vacant expression Charlie had permanently. i imagine that's what he was going for given that he now IS Charlie/Paimon.

"I didn't see Peter as being traumatised in the last scene or miserable."

Oh, come on. The look on his face was not that of a happy camper. You would think that since the demon is now housed in a healthy male body he'd look a little more pleased and content. But he doesn't.

Well you see it totally differently than the writer/director, R129, per his interview in Variety.

For those who "see it differently" including the fate of Peter:

Is there ever a Charlie or is she Paimon from the moment she’s born? From the moment she’s born. I mean, there’s a girl that was displaced, but she was displaced from the very beginning. In an odd way, that makes me feel better. (Laughs) That’s nice. See, it’s a happy ending. But obviously, there’s a boy who’s horribly displaced by the end.

I'm curious about Annie's brother who died off screen. She said that he was mentally ill and said that their mother was trying to put things inside him. I'm guessing the mother tried to put the demon in the brother and the spell or whatever didn't work. She decided to wait until years later to find another host.

One's enjoyment of the film is based upon their knowledge of this genre.

It was a retread; The Exorcist meets Rosemary's Baby.

And at times, smacked of a made for tv movie.

I'm with R63 100%---"All of these movies under discussion (except maybe Rosemary's Baby) are juvenile and boring next to Jack Clayton's horror masterwork [italics] The Innocents [/italics]."

Now THAT'S a movie with atmosphere and a great script!

I knew all the spoilers, but geez the last ten minutes is a titty twister.

tho much was slow, it has some keen moments...

love toni c.....and a wolff

Haven't seen it, but it sounds silly.

At least with Rosemary's Baby, there is an element of 'is this really happening, or if she just losing her mind'. A much smarter story, then a demon in a child story.

Well, since you haven't seen it, perhaps you shouldn't comment on it-especially to compare it to something else.

Watching it now, ridiculous. "Did you ask your sister to the party?" Yes, I asked my ugly, weird, 8 year old sister to a high school party.

She's 13.

Well she's not in high school and she's weird but I guess if he wants to stay a virgin, then yeah, bring her along.

Well, at least it's a good thing that you're not at least curious why the mother would be so insistent on taking her to the party rather than waiting to spout off about your superior taste to a bunch of strangers.

I think the whole party thing was a major example of how unbelievably dysfunctional these people are. She expects her teenage son to ask his morbidly withdrawn, ugly 13 year old sister to a party for high school kids? What kind of parent does something like that? And the weird sister doesn't want to go, but the bitchy mother forces her to. It seemed like child abuse to me. I thought the most horrifying aspect of this movie was NOT the demon worship angle but the relationships in that family. THEY were the real horror in this story.

Honestly everyone trying to figure this movie out like it's a puzzle to be solved is what's wrong with the way we consume art today - the director's also talked about the fact that some things just shouldn't add up, that they're in the grips of a malevolent spirit who changes the rules as he goes along just to fuck with them, and that's how horror SHOULD feel. Plotting the course from A to Z is the most boring way to enjoy the genre, for me anyway. You just let it swirl your brain off into madness and hysteria.

All of the flaccid old cock at the end of the movie is what was truly horrifying.

Thanks for pointing me to that variety interview r132, because it proves me right.

[quote][bold]Is there ever a Charlie or is she Paimon from the moment she’s born?[/bold]

[quote]From the moment she’s born. I mean, there’s a girl that was displaced, but she was displaced from the very beginning.

There’s a girl that was displaced. If there was never a Charlie in the first place, there would be no displacement.

Milly Shapiro, the actress who plays Charlie, is rumored to have cleidocranial dysplasia (Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things has the same condition). Apparently, she and her sister discussed it with the NYT several years ago in the context of their anti-bullying work, but that interview seems to have disappeared.

She's 15, and her growth and development are clearly abnormal for her age (this is more apparent in recent live interviews than in still photos), so I'm inclined to believe the rumors are correct, and her family is keeping the info quiet in an effort to avoid the stigma associated with disability.

If she does have CCD, I think that raises questions about whether it is ethical to cast people, especially children, with visible disabilities in roles that require "creepy" looks.

Good question r147,is it better to cast an actual person with a disability or have someone fake it? Like "I am Sam" was so fucking cringeworthy, it would have been better to have Chris Burke from "Life Goes On". I wonder if this girl only gets gigs in horror or fantasy type shows?

Maybe I should have sat closer to the screen, because I missed several things in this movie. I didn't catch any of the writing that Annie finds, it went by too fast for me to read it. I missed the dog getting killed somehow. And those miniature scenes were kind of hard to discern, except for the one depicting the decapitation of Charlie, there was no mistaking that one. But I obviously missed one particularly grotesque one; Vulture stated that "Annie’s mom, Ellen, even insisted on feeding baby Charlie — and one of the miniatures depicts grandma offering the infant her exposed breast — which is probably the most unremarked upon insane thing that happens in Hereditary!"

I honestly laughed out loud at the figurine of Annie's mom with her tit out as Annie clung to infant Charlie. It was so ridiculous.

[quote]I think the whole party thing was a major example of how unbelievably dysfunctional these people are. She expects her teenage son to ask his morbidly withdrawn, ugly 13 year old sister to a party for high school kids? What kind of parent does something like that? And the weird sister doesn't want to go, but the bitchy mother forces her to. It seemed like child abuse to me.

I liked how her relationship to the son made her look to be an unreliable narrator so that when everything goes to hell I really thought that the twist would be that she's actually doing it (the history of mental illness in her family, the sleepwalking/attempted murder of her kids).   Forcing him to take his sister was a passive-aggressive move on her part which was part and parcel of her resentment towards him for what she projected on him (you're always judging me, giving me that look).

[quote]There’s a girl that was displaced. If there was never a Charlie in the first place, there would be no displacement.

If Paimon needed a male vessel why did it end up in Charlie? Charlie says "she wanted me to be a boy".  It feels like there was something missing : did Toni's character think she was having a boy initially?

But if this is just an instance of an entity playing hard and fast with the rules, I suppose these are moot questions.

Still in that category with Baby Boy and Belly as one of the worst films of all time. Sister's head gets lopped off by a telephone pole and you go home and go to bed. The closer it got to the end, the more it resembles a poorly made d-flick more suited for straight to video than the big screen. Forget d-flick. It deserves the 50 cents bin.

You are just purposely being an asshole, R146.

No one was ever forced to drag their younger brother or sister along to things as a tattle take chaperone as a kid? Parents know you are less willing to do crazy shit if there are witnesses who will gladly talk later. Not sure why this is so mystifying. When he asked. To go he tried to make it seem like he’s going to some school festival thing so it wasn’t so bizarre. She was suspicious so she says OK take your sister. He begrudgingly does so because he couldn’t tell her it was really a house party. If I had been Peter I would have said forget it. Charlie would be strange looking anywhere but at the party she stood out like a turd in the punch bowl, especially nomming on that cake like her life depended on it.

Can someone explain to me what happened after the accident? He killed the sister, never even looked to see what happened to the body and then just drove home and went to bed. And no one asked him what happened? He didn't have to explain why he didn't wake the parents when he came home? No one questioned it?! Why?

R154 I think they glossed over the details of the accident for the sake of time but I think it was assumed he was in shock and the details of what happened made sense so he wasn’t charged. Technically he was under the influence of marijuana.

[quote]Can someone explain to me what happened after the accident? He killed the sister, never even looked to see what happened to the body and then just drove home and went to bed. And no one asked him what happened? He didn't have to explain why he didn't wake the parents when he came home? No one questioned it?! Why?

He knew she had stuck her head out the window and that her head struck a pole at high speed. In the most harrowing scene in the movie, he sits there way beyond horrified, knowing his life just changed forever, and eventually forces himself to glance back. He immediately sees all he needs to see with that quick glance. In shock he drives home and leaves the car and her corpse in front of the house. He goes to bed and lies there and waits for her body to be discovered. It is.

Of course his parents come to talk to him about it and the police do too. But you don't see that as he is drifting through a nightmare and this is a movie so we are spared the tedious interview process and the focus is on the nightmare he and his family are going through.

I thought it was one of the best representations of shock that I've ever seen in a film. That actor really nailed it. Those moments were excruciating.

I went to see it without having read any spoilers and with high expectations. Was horribly disappointed. What a waste of time and money! Story does not hold together at all and parts of it are simply ridiculous. Toni Collette was amazing, though, as the mother.

Oh, a lot of things about this movie don't make sense and the viewer has to flail around for an explanation. One thing I wondered about was why the hell didn't the brother or somebody at the party call 911 when the sister started going into convulsions from eating the nut filled cake. Why haul her to the car and drive like a maniac to get her to a hospital when an ambulance can be called? I guess the explanation is that he just didn't know what he was doing, was hysterical with fear and just wanted to "save" her. Or something like that. Anyway, this movie is a mess. I went to see it to see what all the fuss was about and came away just thinking WTF. Just a weird mess of a movie.

I enjoyed the movie. It was jarring and scary as hell. It was slow and deliberate in how it was filmed and what the director wanted you to see. I'm still shaken from it, and when I think about it, I get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'd rather see something like this then "Fri the 13th" or "Halloween".

Just wanted to mention that Milly Shapiro has cleidocranial dysplasia and is actually 15, though playing a 'little girl.' This was the best horror I've seen in a long while.

I thought she was playing a little girl r161, but someone upthread said her character was supposed to be 13. Either way, I still couldn't tell if she was meant to be "special" in the movie.

I think the scariest thing is how many movigoers have to be spoon fed every detail of the storyline of a film. Otherwise, they get confused or act like the film is defective and cry foul.

Most reasonable adults with average critical thinking skills can intuit what happened after the accident and don’t require a full episode of Law and Order to transition to the next part of the movie for the sake of dramatic expediency.

These kind of comments help me understand when people go full retard in moments of crisis in movies.

Man: Get down! someone is shooting at us!

Woman: What do you mean? Why are you yelling at me? Tell me what’s going on!

Man: Get down NOW!

Woman: I don’t understa....(drops to the ground after taking a bullet to the head)

Biggest plot hole: WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE BROTHER IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT MADE HIM THE CHOSEN ONE????

And dont say some "they needed a healthy male host" shit.

You dont CARE about these people. So when theyre murdered or possessed you JUST DONT CARE! A little back story might have helped!

Laughable and so derivative: the whole operation.

No depth=Who CARES???!!

Apparently you care, r164, screaming like a maniac at a bunch of strangers on the internet about it

That’s actually not been said publicly by her or her family R161, and people are assuming a lot about her face and body. It is not known if she has any sort of illness or disability. There has also been a lot of discussion about casting a child with looks some would consider as disabled as a creepy demon, and is it fair to the child.

of course I care-but not so much about people like you R165 who comment on posters and not topics.

I say it again WHO CARES ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?

Tits. Yikes.

[quote]Biggest plot hole: WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE BROTHER IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT MADE HIM THE CHOSEN ONE????

the demon likes sausage? Because really, who doesn't?

R164 when Annie is going through her Leigh's, her mother, photo album, she sees a picture of her mother in a bridal gown, surrounded by cultists who are throwing confetti. In the treehouse/Paimon altar, we see a picture of grandma Leigh, which has at the bottom "Queen" Leigh. The demon's name is "King" Paimon. Leigh was symbolically married to the demon (King and Queen), and the head witch could produce a male offspring for the demon to inhabit. Grandma Leigh failed in her first attempt, because her son hanged himself at 16, leaving a note which blamed to his Leigh, his mom, for "trying to put people inside him". Her next chance with a member of her own blood was her grandson, Peter.

And really, your shrieking does make you seem like an idiot R164. Go watch Transformers 5 in you can't figure out the plot points without being fed them.

I was not involved with his character AT ALL ,R170

That is the fault of the writers

Some need less from a character to feel engaged.

You R170 seem to be one of them.

I felt the movie was lightweight and as interesting as your comments.

To each his own.

🙄

You pretentious loon ^

said by someone still using emojis and name calling.

There are many ways to create a character that is memorable.

This movie failed for me.

Back to the topic-

Whether one likes it or not, I think this movie is quite memorable. I keep thinking about it after watching it 2 weeks ago, and I can’t remember when was the last time a film left such an impact. I believe this one will stand the test of time and go down as a modern classic.

r164 is right though, none of these people were really likable, we didn't even really feel bad for them. It was a blessing when the bird decapitator got her head lopped off too and that huge mole on the one kid's face made him not hot enough to invest in. Did Gabriel Byrne even have any dialogue? I don't remember him saying anything. Who were we supposed to root for? I wanted the dog to live and that was about it.

Did we ever figure out why the daughter’s face looks like that?

Thank you R175 for backing me up. Great and funny post all around!

Two films said to have inspired this one; The Exorcist and Rosemarys Baby BOTH have well written characters you cared for.

This film could have been SO much better with a more in depth and mature approach to its characters.

-Child's play-

"I wanted the dog to live. Thats about it"

BRILLIANT

THREAD CLOSED!

And? Did the dog make it?

Count me in as another who thought this movie was ridiculous. I love good horror. This was not good horror.

Disturbing more than scary, although it has scares. I thought it was very good- Toni great. I tend to see it as a metaphor for those who cannot escape their fate- in this case mental illness- no matter how hard they try. And that is disturbing.

R170, I think they were showering her in gold coins. There are allusions to reaping the gold and Paimon bringing wealth on his disciples.

[quote]I think the scariest thing is how many movigoers have to be spoon fed every detail of the storyline of a film. Otherwise, they get confused or act like the film is defective and cry foul.

It's always been that way. "Yeah it's great, but will it play in Peoria?"

Reminds me of another movie we recently discussed -- Dune. All that narration that was added because the punters would be confused. There are a lot of people out there who just get easily lost in the sort of story I like most -- one that is not drawn for me in Crayola.

Kind of a derpy God those cultists ended up with.

The vast majority of people, and lately, Data Lounge, are idiots R182

[quote]Biggest plot hole: WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE BROTHER IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT MADE HIM THE CHOSEN ONE????

There wasn't anything special and he wasn't really a "chosen one." He was just a young male vessel, as the demon preferred. What makes you think there was anything special.

By the way, some of the obscure books of demonology that describe Paimon say that he has been equated with Azazel, a fallen angel more people may be familiar with.

[quote]Kind of a derpy God those cultists ended up with.

lol! Who knows, he may transform into something hideous (or gorgeous) as time goes on and he gains power. He is said to have 25 legions, which is 125,000 soldiers, and so now that he has a proper earthy form, he will gain in stature.

Didn't know much about it before seeing it but ended up loving it, haven't wanted to go re-watch a film at the cinema in ages.

I may actually do that myself, r186 -- I haven't either!

I think that this may be helpful in getting to the core of the public debate about Hereditary. This is not about casting aspersions or making judgements.

The reason for the heated love and hate for this movie is not about the movie at all, but about the sensibility of the viewer.

We are currently going through a period of representationalism in culture. Atonal music is out of favor as a revival of romanticism and order has boomeranged back in serious music. Plays are once again about social issues and families where once they were metaphor ladened poetry about existence.

And what does all this have to do with Hereditary? This. Popular culture is beginning to dabble in a level of abstraction not seen in decades. And it is happening in a genre that has always been tidy and plot driven.

Literal minded people are simply not going to tolerate a movie like Hereditary. Metaphor, simile, symbolism and analogy are all used extensively in Hereditary. Literal minded people have no interest in ideas being represented in multiple ways simultaneously. Time is fluid. Characters are inscrutable. Plot isn't about a 'story' as much as a series of evocations that sustain a mood and build tension. The literal minded become angry with the lack of continuity, the seemingly inane happenings and bipolar shifts in tone

The movie is made by and for figurative minded individuals. They love the mood setting and the unexplained. They relish having to do some of the work to appreciate what they are seeing. Figurative people are accustomed to investing in ideas and accepting multiple mixed messages delivered at the same time.

So when a literal minded person screams that the movie is a terrible bore, pointless, without memorable 'characters' and laughable, they are right. In a LITERAL sense Hereditary fails as a cogently plotted narrative involved with engaging characters who lead an audience to an identifiable and satisfying conclusion..

But just as it disappoints those, it invigorates the figurative or creative minded. It conjures its own world and requires the viewer to be immersed rather than led.

I would suggest that the literal minded take a moment to think about what they are going to consume before committing to any form of art and cultural activity. I think it's fairly easy to discern if something is or isn't bound to be ones cup of tea.

But again. This furor is not about the movie but about the viewer. Since a literal minded person can't see the value in the movie, they must devalue those that admire it. And the creative minded person who loves it, can't help but think that the literal minded are blind.

It's a good metaphor for the age we're living in.

And monster moms are always scary. These Paimon type monsters must be giving them lots of money or something like maybe apartments in the Dakota in Rosemarys’Baby. I never know what exactly these weirdos dancing headless in the night actually get from their masters.

Although interestingly, r188, some of the biggest criticisms I've read and heard of he movie were about its literalism in representation of some things, such as Annie's corpse floating headless up into the tree house.

Yes R190, 'literalism' is almost always employed in the midst of more abstract storytelling. Most highly stylized art has a set of goal posts. On one end is the purely abstract and on the other is the openly realistic.

In all honesty, Hereditary is by no means a complex work of art. It does tip its toes in a kind of narrative adventurousness that is uncommon in mainstream entertainment.

I could literally feel the "WTF?" vibes from the audience at the end of the movie when the son is being crowned and the matter-of-fact voice of Annie's demon worshipping frau friend blithely gives her little speech : "You are Paimon. One of the eight Kings of Hell. We have looked to the northwest and called you in. We've corrected your first body and give you now this healthy male host. We reject the Trinity and pray devoutly to you, great Paimon: give us your knowledge of all secret things and all mysteries of the Earth; bring us honor, wealth and good familiars; and bind all men to our Will, as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to Yours." And then the demon worshippers (two of them are the headless corpses of Grandma and Annie) start chanting "Hail, Paimon!" Yes, the audience reaction was one big "WTF!?"

You've got to think that Annie and her mother got the short end of the stick, when it comes to being the cultists of Paimon. I mean, what fun is it to rule over a fallen earth if you don't gots a noggin?

They may grow their heads back. Annie was just a stooge so maybe she just wanders around bringing the groceries in from the car, but Annie's mother set the whole thing up so you'd think she would not want to be headless in the Time of Paimon, but one of the Lords of the Earth.

Forgot to ask, what do we think of Ellen's death? Did she die of natural causes or did she throw off the mortal coil to bring about the coming of Paimon?

Good analysis, R188. You also notice that most Americans have a tiny attention span with it comes to dialogue. Any verbal exchange that lasts more than a couple of minutes without a snarky remark or a fart joke and people lose interest. Then they wonder why they are lost during more nuanced parts of the film.

R188 is a rather condescending post in attempting to divide the literal minded from the creative minded in this case.

This is not a right/left brain issue.

Its about artistry and the lack of it in this lame regurgitation that added little that was new,inventive,thought provoking, nor gut wrenching IMO!

I have no problem with characters being "inscrutable"

Just invisible.

And I found little depth in what you called " evocations that sustain a mood and build tension."

No mood-no tension for me.

I had no issue with the "lack of continuity,"

Just the lack of ingenuity.

Trite shite.

And lets not divide the world into who's creative and who's just literal minded,shall we?

Its also about one's age and experience of film and this genre.

We've seen this all before.

But better.

BIG fail.

Your post,on the other hand was intelligent.

(But only if you look at it "literally" )

lol

OP, you're right -- HEREDITARY is more literary and clinical realism than horror.

It's not super scary and you can't tell who really got hurt, when and where, by whom.

But it's an excellent movie and one of the best shot, directed, designed and acted horror flicks ever.

You are probably the type of horror fan who just likes the fight porn -- gore and violence in bullshit situations, and I won't hold that against you (unlike society).

But you ought to love literary films, too -- not just movies that get your thrills and jollies off.

HEREDITARY is a very realistic demonstration of schizophrenia and the problems that many real people have every day. It shows we, the viewers, exactly what psychotic, bipolar and schizophrenics experience and think is happening in their worst episodes. It shows what can go wrong because of that. So it's just like THE SHINING, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, SHUTTER ISLAND, BLACK SWAN, THE VOICES with Ryan Reynolds and BABADOOK that way.

All some of the best films ever made which are important for showing how to identify and deal with this disease.

Schizophrenics could hurt you one day or you could suffer from it at some point in your life. You, and all people, need to know.

So you should be proud that the horror genre can provide insightful literature about higher causes, and not just bullshit violence porn and cheap thrills.

Mix up your tastes and have some appreciation.

The melodramatic voiceover at the end reminded me of Rosemary's Baby:

"And His name shall be ADRIAN!!!"

All hail Adrian.

yes, R199---most of everything in this movie is reminiscent of other films

Yuk

Oh bullshit r182 and r188, quit acting like if people don't like something it's because it's too "deep" for them. This movie was about as deep as a fucking puddle, it's relying on so many of the new trends like demonic possession and scary ghosts that I'm actually surprised it didn't also decide to make it a found footage movie. Who was the fucking hero in this tragedy? There was nothing noble in anyone's fate, it was a middle aged woman who straight away said she didn't care much for her mother, we see that she seems to feel the same about the rest of her family, and we can soon see why. Floating specters weren't scary when the Brady kids did it and they still aren't.

It's very reminiscent of another shitpile foisted on us this year, "Killing of a Sacred Deer" which is also dotted with characters we can't stand in ridiculous situations.

"Floating specters weren't scary when the Brady kids did it and they still aren't."

LOVE YOU R201! And everything else you said!!

And R202--youre so right about the "ridiculous" Deer!!

Insightful analysis r188

We need more posters like you on Data Lounge

Not so much r201 and his lickspittle at r203

My friend clicked his tongue in the car on the way back and I nearly crashed into a tree.

[quote] If Paimon needed a male vessel why did it end up in Charlie? Charlie says "she wanted me to be a boy". It feels like there was something missing : did Toni's character think she was having a boy initially?

Toni Colette's character says something at the grieving family members' meeting to the effect that she would not let her mom get near Peter when he was born, but had reconciled with her mother before she had Charlie and her mother was all over Charlie. Also, we learned from the welcome mats that Charlie's full name is "Charles." Her mother must have convinced her to name the baby "Charles" hoping it would be a boy, and when it wasn't, and she could get to Charlie rather than Peter, she transfered Paimon into that host because she couldn't get Peter.

[quote] One thing I wondered about was why the hell didn't the brother or somebody at the party call 911 when the sister started going into convulsions from eating the nut filled cake. Why haul her to the car and drive like a maniac to get her to a hospital when an ambulance can be called?

Peter was high: he had just been smoking grass with his friends. Since everyone lived so far from everyone else way out there in the country, he panicked and thought he would get her faster to the hospital himself than an ambulance would get there with an epipen.

As to people saying "Why didn't they have an epi-pen in the car?": they established earlier in the film when Charlie was eating the chocolate bar that they had forgotten the epi-pen before (which does happen, believe it or not).

The grandmother left a note in the incantations book that Toni Colette's character read toward the beginning of the film that said something to the effect that although she and her family would have to make horrible sacrifices, they would reap wonderful rewards that would make it all worthwhile. Did she just mean Peter? The rest of the family was killed, and both she and Toni Colette ended up as headless corpses bowing to Paimon. I don;t see what good money will bring them in that state.

The creepy daughter was less evolved with her nut allergy and should have known better than to fuck with chocolate, as most is made in factories with nuts

Alex Wolff will be really hot when he grows older if he works out some. It was weird, though, that neother he nor his sister looked anything like Toni Colette or Gabriel Byrne.

Nobody is commenting about the most important aspect of the movie: Toni Colette unbelievable performance. She's just spectacular, Toni anchors the movie from beginning to end. I hope she gets the nomination. She just taught Jennifer Lawrence how to act in a cult movie. Everything that the whore Lawrence tried to do in Mother! and failed, Colette did amazingly in Hereditary. Simply one the best actresses in the world.

This is worst ‘ why doesn’t someone call police’ movie of all time.

I saw it tonight enjoyed but the ending was bat shit crazy. After reading this thread having buyers remorse but I am planning to watch it again.

What happens after the car wreck is kinda explained here but I’m still shaking my head. Themuch loved unlovable sister is having a bad nut allergy reaction and he is driving to hospital. He tells sister he is almost there later it looks like they are in the middle of nowhere. She dies in a freak accident. What does he do ? Drive home and go to bed. About a minute later the parents are screaming over Charlie’s death. I don’t recall a phone ringing but still I’m sure the girl had no id.

What kind of job is there in making miniature houses? Her phone call from her boss made it seem she was very important.

I like Toni and was happy she was getting Oscar hype but sadly I think it is just that hype. She is very good but more importantly she really sells the movie that makes you believe all the insanity that is going on. I think how her character ends is going to hurt her chances. The whole cast is great but I had a problem with Gabriel Byrne He’s too old for this type of movie unless he is playing the grandfather. I noticied him and Collete ep the movie.

Toni’s character must be living under a rock. She asks her son is there going to be drinking at the party. Duh.

r212, "someone didn't call the police" because the sane people couldn't see the hallucinations. As soon as Gabriel Byrne realized Colette was having a psychotic episode, he refused to burn her spell book and she immediately killed him. HE WAS THE ONLY SANE PERSON WHO FIGURED OUT EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON, BUT GOT KILLED BEFORE HE COULD DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Stop thinking of this film as literal. It's played through the prism of two schizophrenic characters' minds. The weird and supernatural -- even the natural-seeming like Joan's character -- can all be hallucinations in the mind of a schizophrenic and they truly believe only burning a spell book or killing a person will stop the horrors they're experiencing -- NOT CALLING THE COPS.

Now, how do you know Wolff wasn't driving his sister to the emergency room when the accident happened? You don't know where he was going. And he knew the epi-pen is all she needed, so it may have been faster to simply drive home and use the epi-pen.

[quote]What kind of job is there in making miniature houses?

A SUBSIDIZED, PSYCHIATRIST-PRESCRIBED THERAPY PROGRAM FOR SCHIZOPHRENICS. You need to understand that LOTS of schizophrenics are creative artists to begin with and the medical community believes that encouraging their artwork is a safe, constructive job for them to do while in treatment. So many programs are set up to reward and encourage patients to create art, instead of working at the Home Depot and cutting somebody's head off with a chainsaw when they mistake someone for a bear running on fire.

Remember how Toni Collette's art gallery curator called her and asked how she was doing; how the work was coming and whether he could see her? That's because he is also a therapist for mental patients and worried whether she was having a relapse and/or taking her meds.

Watch this year's Academy Award-winning documentary short HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405 for a touching, beautiful portrait of a woman with mental illness who was placed into an artistic therapy program and actually able to be a productive member of society because of the program.

Wow that was good 213. Next time I see movie I will look at it differently. Without a doubt this will become a cult movie. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I honestly don't know what all the fuss is about - it's the most boring movie I've seen in ages. Toni Collette going inexplicably bonkers is simply another Monday for her.

Agreed R215---And all this "in depth analysis" is like sorting through crumbs thinking youll find something substantial to eat. It's laughable!

And sad that great films like Rosemarys Baby and even The Exorcist are even COMPARED in ANY WAY to this.

A tv movie of the week from the 1970's at best.

And for those who disagree, stick to the topic and dont come for me.

Thank god I am not alone in my disgust for this shit.

If it is two peoples psychotic vision why do they both see Ellen a stranger ?

I mean Joan.

The director says we ARE supposed to take the film literally.

R219, you forgot to say Blanche.

R219, the director also claims he has another HOUR of footage that he wanted to include. Good god, man, it was excruciatingly long and dull as it is. This is not a genius director/writer, despite what some fatuous critics insist.

A 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 87% on Metacritic, which is “universal acclaim” by 48 critics, out weighs the ALL CAPS shrieking histrionics by some random troll.....that troll being you R221

Your opinion is valueless

Let me get the story straugt:

Ellen Leigh belonged to a cult of demon worshipers that included Joanie and the "strange friends" at Ellen's later funeral. They worshiped the demon King Painomon and wanted to bring him to earth preferably in a male body (which he preferred over a female body) because he would give riches and power to the conjurer. She experimented with her powers on her husband, whom she drove to starvation, and her son, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic because he tried to put Paimon in him. She wanted to put Paimon into her daughter Annie's son, but she was estranged from Annie when Peter was born. But Annie's resistance was worn down before she gave birth to her second child, whom Ellen got her to name Charles before she wanted it to be a boy so badly. When Charlie was born (or before when she was in the whom), Ellen arranged for Paimon to be transferred into her body. But because Charlie was weak (and Paimon preferred a male body), Paimon never acted much and remained within Ellen's protection. Paimon manifested himself in terms of the strangeclucking noise Annie made and her fascination with dioramas, which was not an imitation of her mother's art bur rather an attempt to forecast Paimon's worship.

Ellen was again estranged from Annie, but came back towards the end of her own life when she manifested DID (dissociative identity disorder--was she manifesting spirits within herself?) and dementia. This is where I get a bit confused: her death was apparently a signal for the other cultists to act to put Paimon in a male body, so perhaps she had been protecting Charlie from their killing her body ("Who will protect me now?" Charlie said to Annie). The cultists cursed the family so that Charlie would be killed, so that her spirit could be put into Peter instead because it needed to be someone in Ellen's family line. Joanie appeared in Annie's life as an elaborate ruse to get her to perform the fake seance ritual which was really a way of quickening the curse. Decapitation of Ellen's female family members was also central to the curse.

Charlie's sketchbook was a kind of mystical totem that could not be destroyed (probably because it was involved in the seance ritual summoning Paimon into his final incarnation): burning it resulted in the start of Annie's arm burning and then permanently burning Stephen's entire body. By this point the cultists were ready to place Paimon into Peter (that had also quickened the curse by exhuming Ellen's body, decapitating it, and using it in rituals in the attic to also further the curse. When peter woke, the cultists were in the house and had arranged for Annie to be possessed by other spirits so she could fly, and eventually saw her head off her neck. When Peter's family members were all killed, Paimon was ready to possess him. By the end of the film Peter is co-inhabiting Pter's body and the cultists want him to use his power once and for all to make them wealthy and powerful.

Is that correct?

[quote] The director says we ARE supposed to take the film literally.

He's also said--quite directly, in the Variety interview--that the story also functions as a metaphor for how trauma works.

Stories can have multiple meanings. That's the whole idea behind literary and cinematic analysis.

THANK YOU R221 and so true!

"Universal critical acclaim" means nothing anymore. Absolutely nothing.

I mean, have you seen Hamilton??

Case closed!

LOL this conversation though!

Universal acclaim, so your opinion is valueless!

This movie is terrible -- case closed!

The very ending was reaching for ecstasy, although the headless and the icon created with Charlie’s head ironically was quite horrible. The music of the ascendancy into the treehouse was like the opening of Wagner’s Rheingold, and the boy as Paimon was observing what he had wrought, surrounded by golden and white light. I thought it actually almost worked, the only thing that marred it for me was the cheap effect of Collette’s character floating into the treehouse. It looked cheap and stupid. The rest I thought was creepily peaceful and beautiful, while awful and terrifying as well.

I can't grasp why people who hate a movie become obsessed with their derision. I saw Avatar. I hated it. I forgot about it. The next day, I didn't start getting peeved that it made a bunch of money. I didn't start Googling every article about it to use in all kinds of arguments on chat boards. I didn't attack people who liked or loved it.

To be honest, actively spending your time extending a negative experience is just narcissistic. We get it. It is objectively horrible (in your mind) so you seek out conversations to bully others and feel vindicated. It's a movie. That's all. It wasn't made by the father who never loved you or the teacher you always loathed. Toni Collette didn't spurn you and you didn't work at the craft services table for minimum wage.

It's a movie. Get over it..

I agree with you 100%, r227.

I also caught the "Das Rheingold" reference in the music.

I found the shot of the headless body floating along absolutely terrifying so I suppose mileages vary!

R228, nobody in this thread has been rabidly attacking it, so why so defensive? I wonder who has the unhealthy obsession here?

R231, not nice try. Please feel free to reread the thread. The hostiles tend towards ALL CAPS and ‘what the SHITE’ and assholes and on and on and on.

It’s all high volume and idling high.

Cool headedness is not part of their repertoire.

This is where the angry, hostile, unfathomably perturbed person makes a personal attack at the unruffled adversary.

It’s nice to see that you’re learning. The ? Was rudimentary but a step forward.

Uh huh, right R232.

Just block r231, half the nonsense disappears

My daughter saw it. It was OK, not that scary, and many people found the final shots funny.

The corpse in the attic is one of the more ridiculous aspects of this movie (and there are a LOT of them). So the demon worshippers dig up "Queen Leigh's" corpse, cut the head off and stash it in the attic? And they're able to do all that without anyone noticing anything amiss? The "desecration" of the grave is obviously uninvestigated and barely acknowledged. The father gets a call from "the cemetery" , mumbles something about a "desecration" and that's the end of it. Ho hum, Grandma's corpse has been dug up and the body is missing....oh well, these things happen. It would seem he doesn't doesn't think it's worth informing his overwrought wife about Mom's missing corpse; maybe he thinks that would really drive her around the bend, although she's getting crazier by the day anyway. And here's this: a dead body stinks to high heaven and permeates the area where it happens to be. Is this family without a sense of smell? Because no one would not notice the ripe odor of a rotting, headless corpse, even if it is "hidden" in the attic.

The issue isnt about people attacking the film, but EACHOTHER >>> R232 and R228

Totally agree with R231.

And R236-stop trying to find depth or logic in this movie.

Or even questioning it. The "rabid" defenders are on the prowl making this a personal issue. The movie was poorly written.

Fact

YOU'RE laughable, r216.

HEREDITARY has the critics raving with a 90% approval rating.

There IS something substantive to the story. It's a valuable, cautionary tale about real human disease. Deny it all you want, but schizophrenia can still kill you.

Don't belittle me, the critics or the fans just because you're an anti-intellectual simpleton who is cinematically illiterate and doesn't like to be knowledgable about the world and its problems.

Probably because schizophrenics take their delusions and hallucinations literally, r219.

Please provide the link to a legit media source of what the director supposedly said.

R217, Joan IS a stranger to everyone but Toni Collette's mother, who is dead when the story starts.

It is only later that Toni Collette recognizes Joan in photos of her mother's life decades ago with a spiritual cult. Collette claims to her husband that she didn't remember Joan, but that Joan must have stalked her/targeted her when her mother was born.

Are bots even on inconsequential pop culture threads to rip us apart?

I saw it last night, and I've been checking out some of the things that people who have seen the film multiple times have noticed, and also some things the director and the actors have said about the film that may clear up some questions people have here:

*Whoever above thought peter is depressed and sad at the end when he is worshipped by his mother's and grandmother's corpse and the cultists is correct: Alex Wolff has said he discussed things with Ari Aster, and they decided that he would play the part that way. Aster wanted to do a lot of things differently in this film than in other similar films, and one of the things they decided was that Paimon is not happy about having been called out of hell by Grandma Ellen and the cultists: he feels vulnerable and at their command. This is also why Charlie seems so depressed all the time before she's killed and why she asks her mother "Who will take care of me?" after grandma Ellen dies: Paimon realizes how vulnerable he is in these human bodies.

*One thing that goes by really quickly in the classroom scene where Charlie is taking the test is that it is established it is a special education class, and Charlie is considered a special needs student. This helps explain why she gets away with making that odd clucking sound (which is Paimon's hallmark), and why Peter takes her to the high school party: anyone who has had special needs siblings knows they have trouble making friends, and so your parents are constantly after you to take them to parties so they can have some sort of social contact (since their own peers usually will have nothing to do with them). The other kids at the school are probably used to Peter having to drag her around to parties.

*Two things that bothered me last night is 1) why Paimon doesn't take control of Peter's body right after Charlie is killed, and 2) why the parents have to die. The book about Paimon Annie rifles through at the end explains it, although most people miss this because the explanation passes by very briefly: the demon Paimon can only take over a male host after it has been well worn down and will put up little resistance. Thus Paimon can only take over Peter's body (which the demon is being forced to do by the cultists' spell) after he has reached his breaking point, having seen both his parents hideously killed.

Like the HBO series Looking, I hated it because I didn’t really identity with anyone in the movie. Instead of moving on I’m going to keep talking about how boring it was and telling fans how much I hate the film.

No, r223, there is no reason to assume any of your causal effects or a spell formula dependent on what the characters did.

Firstly, "demon worshippers" is a simplification. A coven of black magic sorcerers or witches is more like it, which yes, depends on their worship and belief in demons. But the movie shows that their motive was to make free piles of money through magic, when it showed close-ups of those bookmarked pages in one of the grimoires -- spell books that superstitious people have truly been writing, selling and reading for hundreds of years because they purport to teach black magic and they usually revolve around harnessing the power of a particular demon.

Now, why are they drawn to black magic? Why do they believe in it? Because Ellen was schizophrenic and Joan probably was, as well -- if Joan really existed during the movie action. Because Joan might have been 100% a hallucination in Toni Collette's mind ONLY -- triggered from Toni Collete's memory or when she went though old photo albums and saw this mysterious woman in a witch cult with her mom decades before. Certainly, the naked, creepy cult members popping out of the woods or house corners floating were just hallucinations.

Nobody is "diagnosed as schizophrenic because he tried to put Paimon in." They are diagnosed as schizophrenic if they are schizophrenic and one Paimon ritual is hardly the only crazy thing that Ellen's blood relatives did -- they were all violent, cruel and hallucinating; with vindictive and toxically blameless attitudes. So quit taking the literal view that HEREDITARY is a demon story and Ellen's innocent son was framed by a real demon. Her son inherited the schizophrenia -- or mental illness, at least -- because Toni Collette says he killed himself. Ellen was projecting her magic spells and beliefs ON TO her son, which drove him crazier and probably made him want to kill himself, but it wouldn't have been the only incident/reason. Persistent fighting and I'm sure a LEGION of Ellen's batty expectations, projections and psychotic episodes made everyone's lives miserable, all the time. She kept coming back trying to change and cast spells on the son multiple times harassing him, just like she did to Charlie later, when she was apparently trying to remold Charlie into a boy for her delusional magic rituals.

[quote]But because Charlie was weak (and Paimon preferred a male body), Paimon never acted much and remained within Ellen's protection.

Paimon never acted because he's not real. He's a wish and a delusion that Ellen, Joan and eventually Toni Collette's cult projected on to people and events because they're crazy.

Joan later claims that Paimon couldn't enter Charlie's body because she was female. And Charlie told us that Ellen "kept trying to make me a boy," which she didn't understand, which suggests the whole cult came to believe a demon needed a different gender baby.

But the truth is, the Paimon transference didn't occur BECAUSE THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS DEMONS. PSYCHOPATHS CONTRIVE ANOTHER DELUSION TO EXPLAIN WHY THEIR FIRST ONES DIDN'T WORK OUT THE WAY THEY THOUGHT.

Now I thought the loud clucking noise in Peter's head was something that Charlie did in the back seat of the car with her tongue when she was alive. Peter's paranoid-schizophrenic mind hallucinated an amplified, disruptive version of it after her death as a result of guilt and anxiety.

You have no grounds to assume Annie's fascination with dioramas was caused by Paimon, or even that anybody in the film thought that.

Annie was probably an artist before and regardless of any psychological problems or family drama because it's her hobby. It is probably something that psychologists and therapists encouraged in her AFTER seeking treatment, because she loves it. And Toni Collette herself said it was therapeutic. When Gabriel Byrne objects to a miniature model of Charlie's beheading, Collette says something like, "it's an objective view of the accident," meaning that it was helping her overcome her mental illness and judgement clouded by hysteria, grief and hallucination. All of her miniatures are a therapeutic way for a crazy person to "wrap their head around" reality and understand it clearly. They are constant, instead of the morphing freak show inside the schizophrenic mind.

What would "Paimon" want with any of Annie's dioramas besides the beheading? A demon wouldn't give a shit and nothing in the film concludes it's part of any ritual.

There is no literal, chain of events involving a real demon or its needs. Only the mental illness is real.

[quote]Ellen's death was apparently a signal for the other cultists to act to put Paimon in a male body, so perhaps she had been protecting Charlie from their killing her body ("Who will protect me now?" Charlie said to Annie).

Charlie's comments were out of helplessness because she knows she's a special-needs child with mental illness dependent on her mother in a totally unrelated scene.

There is no proof or implication in the movie that Ellen's death was a signal to the cult or a step in a ritual. You can't assume anything here. But my guess would be that Ellen was in and out of pscyhotherapy and hospitals her whole life, just like Annie and her kids; estranged then recovering in cycles. Annie admits she hated and fought with her mother constantly and denied interaction with her for long periods. My guess is that ELLEN HAD TO GIVE UP THE WITCH CULT ON DOCTORS' ORDERS, AS PART OF HER THERAPY, IF NOT TONI COLLETE'S OWN REQUIREMENT FOR A RELATIONSHIP.

No "waiting for Ellen or Charlie to die" as particular steps in a spell.

Therefore, ELLEN HAD TO TERMINATE HER RELATIONSHIP WITH JOAN AND THE CULT and forbid Joan from interacting with her or her family.

BUT AFTER ELLEN DIED, Joan was free to prey upon Annie and the others who had no idea / didn't remember who she was. If Joan's not crazy, she's an evil, religious fanatic. But she could also just be Annie's hallucination based on Annie's memory or the photos of Joan in the album.

So it wasn't a spell need -- it was a new chance for crazy Joan to continue what she started with Ellen decades ago and fix what SHE THOUGHT they got wrong by casting a NEW SPELL ON PETER. The only spell need mentioned was for Annie to have a boy -- and that was only added when their first, stupid attempt failed.

BECAUSE THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS DEMONS OR MAGIC.

Maybe crazy Ellen, crazy Joan or a spell book said that Charlie had to be killed. BUT THE MOVIE NEVER SAID THAT or even implied it. The cultists didn't "curse the family" and nowhere did anyone say they had to put Charlie's spirit into Peter. It said the cultists wanted to put Paimon's spirit into a male child of Annie's-- which turned out to be Peter. Why are you stuffing Charlie's soul in there, too? I don't think anyone in the cult had any reason to kill Charlie. It was an accident.

Nothing is "central to the curse." Crazy people just interpret and fabricate new rules when their psycho predictions don't come true. They SCAPEGOAT or blame it on something else that can't be seen or proven ("Oh! Paimon must have wanted a boy!") What they think is happening isn't really happening, just like you!

Charlie's sketchbook was not a mystical totem. Toni Collette projected a false meaning on to it from her delusional mind. She believed that Gabriel Byrne had to destroy it in a fire ritual, but she never told us why. You'll never know what that was or what part it may have played in a spell. Maybe Annie's delusional mind thought it was the only way to cure her OWN anxiety. Maybe she wanted a ritual a blessing from the father to kill Peter without spiritual repercussions. Because she was threatening Peter, blaming him, fighting and making hate drawings of him in all the build-up before. Crossing out his eyes and shit; taking revenge on his face with angry stabs.

But you have no grounds to conclude the sketchbook was indestructible or tied to the Paimon plot in any way. Byrne simply refused to burn it because it would play into Annie's delusions. Annie's lighter fuel and her clumsiness in rage is what LOOKED like set Byrne on fire -- and I believe the book DID burn up with it. But it could have all been a hallucination or a setup: If Byrne didn't obey the book-burning ritual that Annie wanted, then she would set HIM on fire instead -- so she doused his clothing in the lighter fluid before she woke him up.

You can attribute Annie's floating, the naked cultists popping out of corners and woodlands, self-throat slitting but still surviving and U.F.O. lights to real demonic powers if you want to.

But they were all hallucinations of Peter and/or Annie. You were seeing what a diseased, schizophrenic mind sees. Mortal cultists don't wander around anyone's neighborhood naked or camp in house corners.

And "the cultists" didn't dig up Ellen's body and behead it -- Annie did. Annie was the one to "find" it and Gabriel Byrne had been contacted by the police about the grave's desecration. He accused her alone of stealing the corpse and using it for some UNSPECIFIED ritual, which Annie probably dreamed up because of the way Charlie lost her head.

The headless corpse was there, in a robe, laying prostrate at the ceremony in the treehouse in the end. Does that mean it was needed for the Paimon possession? No. Maybe Annie thought it was reborn / resurrected and the same for Charlie. Or maybe they were just idols to Annie and "the cult."

If this movie were a real demon story, like THE EXCORCIST, then they wouldn't have named it HEREDITARY. And the hauntings would happen to everyone, not just TWO BLOOD RELATIVES. Gabriel Byrne and other, sane characters never saw any floating people, heard disruptive clicks or sensed any of the supernatural stuff.

But in the EXCORCIST films, all the priests, friends, neighbors, family, doctors, soldiers and scientists either get killed by the demon or injured by its violence. They bear witness to the miracles and are physically affected.

If HEREDITARY is about a real demon, then where was the magic money promised by Paimon?

There's no "Paimon." Peter is just a crazy schizophrenic himself who is going to accept all the worship and play his new role because he's selfish and deluded, plus Annie or Joan are telling him it's true.

r217, Joan is probably a real person, but we don't see Peter interact with her much.

Joan could be a hallucination only in Annie's mind, or in Peter's mind based on what Annie told him. But I think she's a real person in a cult who believes in magic and may be shizophrenic, psychotic or bipolar herself.

I DON'T believe all the characters in one scene are seeing the same things, however.

r236 missed Gabriel Byrne's entire reaction.

He accused Toni Collette of stealing the corpse and planting it in the attic ALONE. He mentioned proof of her being missing and claiming to be at the movies long nights.

So there was no "demon worshippers digging up "Queen Leigh's" corpse, cut the head off and stash it in the attic? And they're able to do all that without anyone noticing anything amiss?" It was just Annie and YES, she had access to do it all when the rest of the family wasn't there.

The desecration WAS under investigation -- Gabriel Byrne's email was from a police inspector, if I remember. And YES, maybe he shielded the info from Annie to protect her mental health or the investigation.

And YES, the corpse closed up in the attic could have gone unnoticed by the rest of the family for weeks and the movie might only have been days.

Worst, piece of crap movie that I've seen in years. Thanos, please snap your finger and do away with the moment this pile of horse Doo was released onto the world.

r224 wrote,

[quote]The director also said--quite directly, in the Variety interview--that the story also functions as a metaphor for how trauma works.

Then that proves my interpretation conclusively.

The supernatural events in the film are HALLUCINATION ONLY, not "Paimon power."

And I'm sorry for using all-caps, even though you weren't complaining about mine.

I'm using them because some people here are making really egregious non-sequitirs and they need the highlighted parts.

r242, you're a fool to keep believing this is actually a demon story like EXORCIST or THE CONJURING.

Peter was hallucinating those sounds, as schizophrenics do all the time. Not even Peter necessarily believes it's "Paimon." Who said it was "Paimon's hallmark" besides you?

Paimon didn't take over Peter's body immediately after Charlie died BECAUSE THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS DEMONS OR MAGIC.

And neither the spell book nor any character in the film said the parents of Peter had to be killed to induce the Paimon spell.

Ellen's death simply created a new opportunity for Joan to prey upon crazy Annie and her family, who believed she had to cast more spells and conduct new rituals.

I've Ignored the crazy poster who keeps insisting it's all about (and only about) schizophrenia.

What a nutjob.

r253 just doesn't want to admit he's an idiot who didn't get the movie.

He's missing the key to the puzzle: knowledge about mental illness and how it works.

WHERE IS THE PILE OF PAIMON GOLD? SHOW ME THE MONEY! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

WHY ARE THE ONLY KILLERS HUMAN, BY HUMAN MEANS?

WHY DID THE DIRECTOR SAY IT'S A METAPHOR?

Why is the movie called HEREDITARY?

Why not, DEMONIC?

"And "the cultists" didn't dig up Ellen's body and behead it -- Annie did."

Um, exactly how did she manage to do that, dig up a grave, break into the coffin, remove the body, at some point behead it, and then store it in the attic of the family home, completely undetected? Just another one of the utterly implausible things about this movie.

"And YES, the corpse closed up in the attic could have gone unnoticed by the rest of the family for weeks and the movie might only have been days."

You don't know much about dead bodies, do you? Judging from those flies, that body had been around for a while. And corpses STINK and the stink is strong and nobody could have missed that smell. This kind of puts me in mind of the loathsome Ira Einhorn, also known as "The Unicorn Killer." He nicknamed himself "The Unicorn" because Einhorn in German means "unicorn" and because he considered himself a very unique and superior personality. He was a "hippie guru" activist who passed himself off as instrumental in organizing Earth Day (this was bullshit). He was also an abuser of women. He had a long relationship with a nice, passive young woman named Holly Maddux. They were together, off and on, for five years. When she went over to his place to get her things (she was finally leaving him) he smashed her skull to pieces with some heavy object and stuffed her body in a trunk in his closet. His neighbors soon noticed a foul, organic odor emanating from somewhere around Einhorn's apartment. Efforts were made to mask the smell, but nothing really works. A dead body smell is hard to get rid of. Eventually, the smell somewhat lessened but lingered a long time. Eventually Holly Maddux's pitiful mummified remains were found. Anyway, o say that a body stored in an attic (attics are generally stuffy places) and nobody would notice has no basis in reality, just like this movie.

Movie has hit a nerve. Very raw one.

"Movie has hit a nerve. Very raw one."

Not really. It's just a very strange, confusing movie that's gotten a lot of hype and people are trying to figure out the fuck is going on with it. Obviously there are a lot of different views and interpretations of it. It's kind of like trying to figure out a puzzle. Critics loved it. Audiences, not so much it seems. I didn't really like it, but I thought Toni Collette gave a good performance. To me, the scariest thing about it was Millie Shapiro's nightmarish appearance and that horrible noise she makes with her moujth. But as a whole I have no idea why critics have gushed praise on this movie.

[quote] Anyway, o say that a body stored in an attic (attics are generally stuffy places) and nobody would notice has no basis in reality, just like this movie.

Honey, do you think in reality people summon demons and cast spells?

The United States of Tara meets The Amityville Horror.

But the r256, the smells and decomposition that bad do not present themselves overnight.

And the HEREDITARY corpse may have been in the house only for a couple of days.

Critics are hip and educated, plus they have seen great movies like this before.

Audiences are full of the unwashed, uneducated masses who hate solving puzzles, don't get the clues, and don't have the knowledge of literature and mental illness.

I felt bad for Toni being in this schlock, had wicked thoughts about the son the entire time, and suspected Gabriel Byrne thought he was in another movie.

The other thing that added to the absurdity and hindered the suspension of disbelief was that the two kids did not look like the spawn of their parents or siblings.

.....

I was totally digging this movie for the majority of its running time. But then something strange happens. The movie completely falls apart during its climax. I started to feel the whole audience, who were so quiet and invested in the movie, suddenly turn on it and start laughing at the parts that were supposed to be creepy. Why in the world would you spend so much time carefully crafting a mood with the help of good acting, cinematography, sound design, and more only to piss it all away in the end? No one cared about the exposition dump at the end of the movie or the convoluted explanations that supposedly explain stuff that we don't get to see.

I would've made the whole family evil people who died by their own hubris. Making the grandma the ultimate villain was lazy and unsatisfying.

The pacing reminded me of Tarantino films which plod along for two hours with stylish and hollow story/dialogue and then the last 15 minutes the film erupts in ridiculous violence and ends when everyone dies in a big shootout. The majority of the film was great, but the hackneyed ending with all the cliche horror visuals and explanation was a big letdown.

Plus if you make a movie and it’s very clear what films you’re riffing off of (The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby) then you’re being a hack, not paying homage.

[quote]knowledge about mental illness and how it works.

I think it's abundantly clear you know quite a lot about mental illness, r254.

I think the director jumped the shark when he decided to behead the dead bodies. We were rooting for Toni entire movie then she starts stabbing herself and cutting off her own head

Toni: And there's MORE!

Gabriel as he is about to climb the ladder to the attic: More than just your dead mother's body in the attic?

I agree to a certain extent R266. I was in a primarily black theater and thought there would be a lot of guffawing and noise, and it was exactly the opposite. People were pretty much riveted and totally silent (except for the car wreck) until the last ten minutes or so, and then there were sounds of protest and giggles.

Agree 27'. Saw it last night and the film is riveting until the last 10-15 minutes when it goes off the rails and becomes a silly borrow of ideas from ROSEMARY'S BABY. There were only 12 people in the theater and I heard most everyone say how "stupid" the film was. It's amazing how you can screw up a great build-up with a sloppy ending. It's still worth seeing IMO, but too much of "what's really going on" is rushed into the final section.

I didn't read this whole thread, so did anyone notice that the scene of Collette sawing off her head with a wire around her neck was a borrow from the Japanese AUDITION?

[quote]Why is the movie called HEREDITARY?

Because the demon has to be called in through the bloodline of one of the chief cultists. So Ellen needed her daughter to have a son as a vessel to summon the devil (or fallen angel if you equate Paimon with Azazel).

Saw it last evening at the Loews 34th Street, young white audience who realized it was all crap about 2/3 in. Someone made the cluck-cluck sound at one point and the whole audience laughed. Toni ascending into the tree house had everyone howling. I found Toni's performance from the seance on as farcical. Poor Toni

You do realize though r274, you can do that in literally any horror movie? It's eminently doable in The Exorcist for example, or The Shining, or even Audition.

If you enjoy horror, you rely on your fellow audience members not to oafishly step on the mood in that way.

Even IF the film is a metaphor, it was a poor one and wasted our time on cheap horror tricks.

Dont show us lights flashing around rooms only later to say it was only happening in their minds.

Cheap trick--weak writing-- cause nothing else that was happening in their minds was as vivid.

Also, schizophrenics sometimes travel beneath the veil and are NOT just "schizophrenic"

And to you >>"Honey, do you think in reality people summon demons and cast spells?"

Dear one, check your history and get back to us on that.

Oh how man refuses to grow up.

To say demons do not exist "BECAUSE THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS DEMONS OR MAGIC" is an ill informed statement about the basic nature of man.

There are worlds other than our own.

And thank god there are OTHER movies than this that have the power and balls to really take us there and not just leave many laughing in the end -at a ruse.

I absolutely love the concept of demonic possession. So the ending was nice and terrifying for me. I still get creeped out thinking about Annie crouched in the ceiling corner or late granny’s blackening appendages.

I get how a fully rational person would see the ending as silly though.

I want the drugs which R276 is so clearly consuming.

You should use nor ASK for drugs R278.

I dont.

that was, you should not USE nor ASK for drugs R278--

I dont.

And thats why I dont believe what theyre selling about "reality"

I want to use Alex Wolff’s face mole as target practice for my loads.

"And the HEREDITARY corpse may have been in the house only for a couple of days."

Seems to me more than "a couple of days" have lapsed since the old lady's funeral. Charlie's death, Charlie's funeral, Annie going to the grief meeting, Annie going to see Joan, Annie forcing her husband and son to take part in a seance summoning Charlie, Peter freaking out at school...I don't think all this takes place in "a couple of days."

[quote]Why in the world would you spend so much time carefully crafting a mood with the help of good acting, cinematography, sound design, and more only to piss it all away in the end?

To keep the events realistic, r266. To keep all the events within the realm of the common and possible regarding a family with schizophrenia trapped together. By not exploring the demon's powers and having a major fight where people and scenery get destroyed, like a normal demon story, the whole movie can be read as either clinical psychology or a demonic possession.

If they developed a real demon fight, the metaphor wouldn't work.

And the movie didn't "make the grandma the ultimate villain." It makes schizophrenia the ultimate villain. Joan was pretty evil / hurtful. Toni Collette was nasty and dishonest. Even Peter retaliated by starting to blame his mother for Charlie's death, when it was his own neglect.

And as the English teacher asked at the beginning of the movie, "Does it make it less or more heroic if the hero didn't have any choice?"

The R276 person has several posts. There's a return on every line leaving a break. Does he/she reread every line 10 times after typing and then hit return with a flourish?

It's actually a little creepy.

Or it's a reference to "hereditary disease," the phrase "hereditary" is most often found in, r273.

Isn't that neat that a movie works from start to finish as either a psychological metaphor or a demon haunting? Most action in a normal movie can't swing both ways.

Well it's not hard to interpret if you refuse hallucinogenic metaphor, r276.

You know exactly where the strange lights and floating bodies come from and why: Paimon the Demon, powering witchcraft. The movie explicitly says so and develops that with a cult, spell books, admitted witches, rituals and psychics.

There's no mystery. You can make it about aliens if you prefer, but there's no suggestion in the movie to support it. If every movie HAS to be about aliens, then you suck.

BUT IT WAS ONLY IN THE ATTIC for a couple of days, r282. It didn't have time to change the whole attic and stink up the whole house! It was sealed!

......

All you Alex Wolff fans should check out another, great drama with horror elements about dangerous mental illness called MY FRIEND DAHMER, co-starring Alex.

It's the true story of the gay serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, played impressively by Disney twink Ross Lynch.

It will ALSO make you want to ejaculate on Alex Wolff's face.

And don't forget NAT WOLFF, Alex's older brother, who did a great job in two good films THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and PAPER TOWNS.

He even did a great job in Reese Witherspoon's twee romantic comedy, HOME AGAIN. And he's much hotter than Alex!

The cuteness of Nat Wolff:

To get back on topic:

I saw it earlier this week, and I was really fascinated by it. It's not a perfect film, and there's a lot in it that doesn't work. But what I really give it credit for doing is providing images that are so different from other horror films of the past 25 years that have really stayed with me since seeing it: Charlie's head with ants and flies crawling over it by the side of the road; Toni Colette's body flying in the rafts of the rooms; Peter seeing his reflection smiling creepily at him in the bookcase glass; Colette sawing her head off with the wire; and the ghastly image at the end of Charlie's crowned severed head perched atop the manikin. Weirdly the things that have creeped me out the most of all are the images associated with the demon King Paimon: that weird scrawl on the post and on the necklaces that's his sigil; that creepy drawing of him crowned and riding a camel, grimfaced, in Ton Colette's mother's book. It creeped me out even more to discover they were drawn from real demonology: the director.writer did his homework.

[quote] We were rooting for Toni entire movie then she starts stabbing herself and cutting off her own head

The director's entire point was that they were all doomed from the beginning--everyone in the entire family.

No, WE the audience were doomed from the moment we sat down to this dud.

And yes, R284: we are VERY creepy.

Be VERY creeped!!

ps-- what I always find "creepy " are the people who check up on how many posts a poster posts.

But hey, R284 we all have our thing, now dont we?

No, what was creepy was Annie's normcore wardrobe consisting of pants that never reached her ankles.

R284 is a paranoid schizophrenic. He hates the movie so much because to him it just looks like any other Thursday morning. "What's the big deal? My family are headless most of the time!'

Sorry Guy who thinks the movie is all about Two schizophrenics ( you did make me go hmmm what you said about Toni’s as miniature house artist. ) but I can’t find the link with the director saying the film was literal. He did say it I’ll keep looking.

How come no one says Peter is dead? He jumps out the window after seeing naked old people ( I don’t blame him). He dies and Charlie’ spirit enters him. What’s up his crown that looked very cheap? I hope the first thing he does as King of the Demons is get rid of that big mole. Don’t think I could look at it in the sequels.

The grimoires and historical sketches are well-known to the horror community by now, r292.

Hollywood has been cranking out a demon possession movie every month for about 15 years now and they all use Medieval spell book illustrations or Aleister Crowley teachings, which conjure magic from the demons, as the books have been instructing "fans" or would-be witches to do for hundreds of years.

So, not much homework is needed. It's a Hollywood cliche that everyone is doing now.

yes R297, you might be right but I didnt go back to check any of his/her previous posts

(cause I find those who do a wittle cweepy)

Because the movie showed him recover on the lawn in front of the house and get up after jumping, r298.

And that WASN'T supposed to be Charlie's spirit light entering him. It was supposed to be the demon Paimon's spirit entering Peter since the demon ritual was complete.

Remember the cult then anointed the demon in the treehouse and declared him king? And Joan said Paimon got a new body, not Charlie?

Stop projecting Charlie on to all the rituals. You're confusing her with the Paimon plot and you're trying to force a requirement between all of them. WITCHES CAN CAST MORE THAN ONE SPELL. Maybe Annie cursed Gabriel Byrne to die. Maybe they used Ellen's severed head to try and resurrect Charlie from the dead, or maybe they just saw Charlie's idol as an idol.

But there is no dialogue, writing or suggestion that they were trying to transfer Charlie's spirit. The movie only said Ellen was trying to possess Charlie's body with Paimon's spirit and it failed.

The spirit enters him before he gets up and he makes the annoying noise Charlie does.

[quote] Maybe Annie cursed Gabriel Byrne to die.

I don't think so--the director has clearly said she's to be understood as a victim in all this.

The family members all had to be killed so Peter could be worn down enough to be able to be possessed by Paimon.

And I don't think there even was a spirit of Charlie to possess Peter--Charlie had been possessed by Paimon from the beginning of the film until her death: for all intents and purposes, there WAS no Charlie--only Paimon.

[quote] What’s up his crown that looked very cheap?

The crown was made as a placeholder indicated royal status by the cultists first to adorn the severed head of Charlie on the manekin/mannequin to indicate that Paimon is their king and a king of Hell. Then when Peter was possessed by Paimon, they put the crown on him.

The cultists are not wealthy yet--they aspire to be made wealthy and powerful by Paimon. Probably when they are they will make a genuine crown of gold for him.

Just because Annie is a victim DOESN'T MEAN she didn't curse or kill Gabriel Byrne!

Toni Collette DID KILL Gabriel Byrne, she DID express the desire to kill Peter in a sketchbook she blamed on dead Charlie, she DID LIE about where her mother's corpse and severed head went, she DID STALK PETER when he was sleeping and fantasize about killing him and blamed it on "sleepwalking" and SHE DID HATE Peter even though the death of Charlie wasn't deliberate. She even admitted at the dinner table that nobody in her family admits they do anything wrong, including herself.

These are all immoral things, so I don't know why people "were rooting for Toni entire movie" or think she's not a problem.

ANNIE'S CHARACTER IS A VICTIM OF SCHIZOPHRENIA, true, but that means it's still a dangerous problem and mental patients refuse treatment when they're conscious, which is consciously wrong.

You idiots who think the Charlie clucking noise in Peter's head after the light takes over his body means Charlie possessed him are still GETTING THE MOVIE WRONG because you're denying the hallucinations and still mistaking this for a demons story. BOTH THE LIGHT ENTERING PETER'S BODY AND THE CLUCKING NOISES WERE ALL PETER'S HALLUCINATIONS, and the movie characters say that Peter and the cult believed the demon Paimon was the only spirit transferring bodies or possessing ANYONE.

Charlie's spirit went nowhere specified by the movie. Joan says it was PAIMON that entered Peter's body at the very end, NOT CHARLIE.

r303, play us a clip of the film or link to the lines in the screenplay where any CHARACTER, PICTURE OR WORD in the movie proves that Peter's family had to be killed before Paimon could enter.

You can't prove that, just like you can't find the quote of the director saying it's a literal demon story.

THE CHARACTERS ONLY SAID PAIMON NEEDED A MALE BODY. THAT'S IT.

Your personal projections don't apply to anybody else.

r304 = delusional. Nobody in this show will ever get a real crown of gold because they're just sick schizophrenics.

Found it , asshole...

Peter is dead and Toni didn't kill Byrne. She begged him to throw the book into the fire and called him the love of her life I understand he thought she was crazy but why wouldn't he do a simple request to throw a book into a fire . She gives up does it herself thinking she will catch on fire again instead it burns Byrne alive....

So THANK YOU R308!

And to all those attempting to elevate and add depth to what is your basic bargain basement brand demon possession flick by adding a metaphorical level the director *himself* denies, just STOP NOW!

Its time to RE-review your movie!!

***The director has spoken!!****

So now lets judge it on THAT!

According to both Wolff and Milly Shapiro, the character Charlie is Paimon. She was born a demon. She's not a person who's been possessed--although she's certainly a pawn--but a literal, physical manifestation of Paimon.

"She is a demon," Wolff succinctly explained.

"He becomes Charlie, that's the end, is that Charlie is Paimon," Wolff said. "Really I believe, yeah, in a literal sense, he's possessed by Paimon, which is Charlie, and he switches and becomes Charlie. And that's the end of the movie."

Aster (THE DIRECTER) confirmed that the ending is meant to be viewed **literally, not simply as a metaphor for mental deterioration or as some sort of delusion on the characters' part. "It is literal," he said. ****"Nobody likes the 'It was all a dream' thing."

"I believe you should always interpret things as exactly what you're seeing, but it kind of doesn't matter, because whatever it is, it turns into f***ing chaos, and that's what it is" he continued

I remember for years people kept coming up with outlandish meanings for Donnie Daeko until the director came forward and said they were all full of crap.

Trust me, R310. I said all that MUCH earlier in the thread and even linked to an interview with the director, but these assholes refuse to believe anything even when it comes from the horse's mouth. I finally gave up because the dicks on this thread just know everything about everything.

The only thing I hate about the movie after everything she had bee through they kill Toni’s character. They could have done something better with her like force her to be Queen Mother of the demons or something.

I kind of want the crazy poster who screams via capitalization to attack me, so here goes nothing:

I think the movie is a metaphor for schizophrenia. It’s clearly not a standard demon flick. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.

Dear, my advice to you is go to your nearest mirror and call yourself what you are.

Troll !!

Oops. I mean...

TROLL !!

[quote]I like Toni and was happy she was getting Oscar hype but sadly I think it is just that hype. She is very good but more importantly she really sells the movie that makes you believe all the insanity that is going on.

AND, she does it perfectly in what is a foreign accent for her. She really is a great actress.

Here's Toni making voice coaches everywhere nod approvingly:

This movie is TERRIBLE. I can't believe people think anything about it is Oscar-worthy.

I love Toni Collette, she's one of my favourite actresses, but even she can't make any sense of this garbage. Her talents are sorely misused.

The problem with this film is that it's just a collection of audio and editing effects in search of a story. What there is, is gruesome beyond imagination and well beyond what this thin script can support. It trivialises grief. And it's boring, laughable and, by film's end, risible.

It's a shame that anybody thinks this is good film; it speaks to the further dumbing down of the culture. This is a terrible film. Just think for a moment of all the audio and visual effects deployed - every cliche in the horror movie book - and how little effect it actually has. Very little. Sound effects and cheap CGI are no substitute for good storytelling.

I got all that R310, and still thought it sucked.

The characters are like dolls in a miniature house, they were destined for this to happen being led by forces larger than themselves. That is the big-ass metaphor.

Is this a movie that has people screaming all the way through it? I hate movies like that.

R318 for the win!

"It's a shame that anybody thinks this is good film; it speaks to the further dumbing down of the culture. "

"BUT IT WAS ONLY IN THE ATTIC for a couple of days."

Everything that happened in the movie happened "in a couple of days?" That doesn't seem plausible. And I doubt the attic was so "sealed off" that it completely eradicated the smell of a rotting, headless corpse.

I literally fell asleep watching The Witch, fwiw. And I have major trouble sleeping in general.

Aside from all the pre-hype over Hereditary, I was surprised to see that it was a really solid horror flick. Some people have complained that it was too "slow burn" (definitely avoid The Witch in that case), but I didn't find it to be that at all. If anything, my main complaint was that it was a bit too heavy handed with all the foreshadowing towards the beginning of the film - but the car accident scene was outstanding and unnerving.

*******Why the public got duped:

Hereditary's marketing scam!!!

Interview with the director

R325, meet OP.

The son does not look like either parent at all.

So what R328?

It’s a movie.

Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. But it is a little distracting, especially in a movie called Hereditary.

No327, not OP.

Just a discerning viewer .

Movie is shlock and here are some good comments from Variety;

"I don’t know what PR machine is behind this but they didn’t reach the theater i was in. Mostly mocking laughter. Mom talks son into taking his 13 year old sister to a high school party (don’t all moms want their daughters to do this) where no one bats an eye that she’s there, where they engage in that classic high school ritual of making chocolate cake with nuts in it, so she can start gagging from a peanut allergy so she can stick her head out of the window on the way to the hospital, so she can get decapitated, so the remaining family can go about life as if it didn’t happen until mom gets mad at the the son’s expression at dinner. Throw in a box of books like “Incantations R Us” and cheesy seances, some it was only a dream/sleepwalking sequences and you have a classic this happens and then this happens and then this happens pile on movie, which all leads to a silly, not scary end. Seriously, nobody laughed when he gets crowned? With those Beetlejuice inspired headless relatives around him?"

The movie is a failure. Not because it’s not scary (which it isn’t especially) but rather because it’s bad storytelling. When, in the last minutes of the film, you need a secondary character to explain everything to a primary character (aka “the audience”), you’ve failed miserably as a filmmaker. Movies are more than shots, and mood, and lighting, and performances. They’re STORIES.

The film is filled with atmosphere but at the end of the day it needs to all make sense without being ridiculous. You have to be a more talented director than Ari Aster to pull off an ending in a tree house filled with naked fat people and decapitated corpses. You have to earn an ending like that and this one wasn’t earned. It was just ridiculous. THAT’S why it’s getting a bad score .

Furthermore, (SPOILER) if the whole point of the movie was to make the son the “king”, then why didn’t the creepy light simply possess him in the first reel and get it over with? Why kill off the family one by one? If the son is the “chosen one”, why, other than to have a cool moment in a trailer, is he smashing his face into his school desk? The entire plot is completely illogical.

I was sooooo excited to see this movie. It’s a shame it sucks!!!!!

[quote] a tree house filled with naked fat people and decapitated corpses

Yuck, I'm not going to it.

Not only a heavy Rosemary's Baby influence but a pronounced Wicker Man influence as well. R's Baby had so much black humor in it and the battle between Paganism and Christianity in Wicker Man was made quite horrific by its ending. What both of those films have in common is that their conspiracies were very simple to understand The one in Hereditary is so convoluted it is easy to misunderstand. Good acting from Collette, Byrne and Wolff but it ain't on the page so it is hardly on the stage. In essence, the plot was so over the place the payoff/twist at the end was awful.

The director claims to have a very unorthodox idea for a sequel. I wonder if he would follow the idea for The Wicker Man sequel where the good side wins to a certain degree. Howie survives the ritual and Lord Summerisle is killed for his failure to bring back the crops. I wonder if the cult conjuring Paimon would end in their ruination and Peter's spirit soul resurfaces in someone else's body. No matter Aster will fuck that movie up too.

I don't regret seeing it, but I can't say I liked it. I wanted to see what all the hype was about and of course it got a lot of critical acclaim, so I figured I'd give it a look. But it was a major disappointment.

I saw "The Witch", too. I thought it was effective. Throughout the movie there is this real sense of DREAD. These people are isolated, living in poverty, and something is intent on destroying them all: the witch. I guess if you like a fasted paced horror movies with lots of gore and sex and jump scares that was not the movie for you. But I like horror movies that are different, ones where the horror is subtle but very menacing.

I went to see it about 2 weeks ago at a midweek bargain matinee. I liked it so much I saw it again at a midweek matinee, regular price. This time there were about 5 times as many people in the audience.

Does anyone know if any of Peter's teachers were in the cult? I couldn't tell for sure.

I liked the movie a lot, particularly the first half of it, and I was impressed by Wolff. Collette was not a surprise but she's a joy to watch.

The plot falls a bit apart when it decides that we need an explanation, when we don't - - ambiguity tends to work better in these cases. Still, I really want to watch it again and some scenes are lingering in my mind.

The only part that really bothered me was when Steve tells Annie that he thinks she was the one trying to dig up her Mom. Yeah, she snuck out and rented a backhoe to excavate a grave when she said she would be at a movie.

Annie sending Charlie along to the party with Peter was a normal cock-blocking move any mother would do, especially when she was already less than fond of her son.

I loved the weird stuff that happens that the characters don't notice; the woman setting a fire behind the house in front of Charlie, the smoke (or breath) in the foreground when Peter is smoking his bong out his bedroom window.

I think the big problem with this was all the hype, we started talking about this like 6 months ago and whoever wrote those hype-y articles saying it's the scariest movie EVAH! didn't do Toni and the movie any favors. I wish I could look at it with fresh eyes but honestly I only saw it because of all I heard about it so I guess that's the double-edged sword with the reviews, they made us see it but they couldn't make us like it.

Its best for a movie about the supernatural to be grounded in real moments.

This had fake and ordinary written all over it.

Rosemary's baby was amazing for the realness of the set up. Even Ruth Gordon had us laughing till she terrified us.

THATS great writing.

People dealing in the world of the supernatural need depth for they are being taken out of their own, like The Exorcist.

Miniatures? Clucking sounds? Door mats? Decapitated heads?

Really???

And on the nose character studies made this devoid of both dramatic tension AND horror.

[quote] Movies are more than shots, and mood, and lighting, and performances. They’re STORIES.

Lol, tell that to Terence Malick, hon.

So R341 give us some other examples of great horror movies. Or is RB the only great horror movie ever made?

Do all horror movies suck except Rosemary's Baby?

Excorist Carrie Halloween Near Dark It

Frailty, When a Stranger Calls, Nightmare on Elm Street.

The Other (Niles and Holland)

Is the movie online anywhere? I never know here to look for bootlegs.

*where

[quote]Excorist Carrie Halloween Near Dark It

I've never seen "Excorist Carrie Halloween Near Dark It," weird title though.

YES, R346 Niles and Uta Hagen go at it and "play the game"

And R344 Carrie had such great moments!!

Nothing scary about The Shining at all.

We're talking about Heriditary, dear.

[quote]Furthermore, (SPOILER) if the whole point of the movie was to make the son the “king”, then why didn’t the creepy light simply possess him in the first reel and get it over with? Why kill off the family one by one?

Paimon couldn't possess Peter until he had been worn down and broken by the deaths of all of his family members and committed suicide by throwing himself out the attic window. Something in their rituals must have prevented them from killing him directly.

and R353, the reason for all that being broken down was..............?

Crap writing

Thats all.

Good horror movies:

Halloween (the original)

The Evil Dead (the original)

The Others

The Thing (I preferred the remake)

The Fly (The original is rather campy; the remake is horrifying)

The Descent (director's cut)

Let The Right One In (original)

The Orphanage

The Devil's Backbone

Night of the Living Dead (original)

Eraserhead

The Re-animator

The Ring

The Innocents

Carrie (original)

The Vanishing (original)

The Haunting (original)

Eyes Without A Face

Freaks

Alien

Aliens

This movie works if you believe that when you tell your husband that you're "going to the movies," he'll make no effort at all to ask what movie you're seeing.

It also works if you believe that after attending one seance, you can conduct one yourself in which glasses slide across the table.

Tell us the science behind seances, R356 please!

Totally overhyped movie, neither scary nor particularlily interesting.

R343 A lot of them were good. The best was the original Wicker Man with Christopher Lee. Basically a battle between paganism and Christianity with a twist ending similar to Planet Of The Apes. In the end, neither side really wins though it seems like one has. The point of the film was that any religious fanaticism ends up in extremes and therefore bad solutions.Hereditary borrowed certain elements from Wicker Man but it seemed the director liked Nick Cage's shitty and campy version better.

Never go the big deal with "The Wicker Man" except I always liked the name Summerisle.

It had a GREAT score and songs and performances. Totally agree with R359.

This thread is full of hater gays who hate EVERYTHING dahling except the five or six horror movies you simply MUST find classics.

Meanwhile Hereditary was a damn good horror movie.

[quote] Hereditary simply needed better editing.

I agree with R18. There is a fine line between suspense achieved by not rushing the action, which I thought the film did well in the first act, and a slightly loose pace in the middle, which was draggy.

I just saw this last night and never read anything about the film other than a few reviews. And I have not read any responses in this thread but cannot wait to! (I suspect it will be massive love and massive hate)

I put this film on par with The Exorcist. Absolutely stunning. I do not recall a film that had me hooked from the first 10 seconds. The production design, score, and Toni's performance are all perfection.

I still do not understand the plot underpinning of the story but will be rewatching.

After seeing it, I do not think Toni will win the Academy Award, but she damn well better get a nomination.

The subconscious menace and unsettling fear that this film creates is simply on another level. LOVED IT.

Oh shit! I just read all the responses and you all certainly helped me understand the plot more.

THE FUCKING SCARIEST PART OF THE FILM was when the nude blonde dude appears in the doorway- I swear to god- the image was scary but I kept going "I know this guy! I know this guy!!" And I realized it is the guy from the funeral who was smiling at the little girl. It is shot like a throw away shot, which seeps into your subconscious. So when he reappears smiling- You think you are remembering something. I have has never had this feeling during a film. Subconscious is the best word I can associate with this disturbing film.

Toni Collette is not winning an Oscar for this.

Gabriel Byrne seemed like he was there for the paycheck. His character was terribly underwritten and he had very little to do. I can easily imagine this film without him.

A dolphin could have played Byrne's part.

The last 10 minutes were unintentionally funny to me. Reminded me of the Evil Dead movies.

I just watched the Bluray after seeing it in a theater when it first came out and I have to say I discovered many plot points that were hard to catch on a first viewing. That said, this movie is more The Shining than Rosemary's Baby in terms of structure. There's a lot that isn't explained like why the father bursts into flames or how people levitate or can continue to live as they decapitate themselves. I think it will become a cult classic if it isn't one already but I have to say that I prefer plots where all the loose ends are tied in the end, and this one doesn't do that.

To all the idiots who laugh in a movie theater when they're not supposed to and spoil a movie experience for the rest of us, I say Paimon is gonna get you. Inconsiderate asses.

Amen R369. Hereditary RULES, and I pray that Hollywood gives her the nomination.

How are you not supposed to laugh in a movie theater, movie cop at r369? Especially in a build up of tension, then stupid shit happens and you laugh out loud. My nieces did in the theater at that stupid decap part.

Your nieces are rude bitches r371

YOUR NIECES ARE LITTLE PIGFUCKERS!

I GOT YOU -NOT R369!!!!

Fuck off r372, it was ridiculously funny.

EAT ME R374. YOUR NIECES ARE SLUTS AND YOU ARE A NASTY NASTY LADY

You're a fucking loon r375, you PRAY that Colette gets nominated for this shit? Fuck off.

WOW. OKAY. I AM FINALLY GOING TO SAY SOMETHING THAT I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SAY HERE.

BUT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I HAVE SEEN SAID HERE! AND SWORE THAT I WOULD NEVER SAY!

EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD- PLEASE BE ON ALERT:

I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO TAKE A MASSIVE SHIT IN MY MOUTH!!!!!

The low Cinemascore doesn't surprise me.

The asses are masses and they don't get many sophisticated films. Horror audiences are usually low-brow and cinematically illiterate, so clever films like HEREDITARY, BLACK SWAN or THE SHINING are lost on them.

Just remember that the critics love this movie and it's about schizophrenia — NOT real demons.

R376's whore nieces have most assuredly already ruined themselves with tampons, as well. Hussies.

UHMMM, I hate to break it to you R378, but the writer/director has already stated that THE MOVIE IS WHAT YOU SEE. It is a real demon and it does not stand for mental illness like "The Babadook". It is a straight up horror movie and what happens to the characters happens to the characters.

r378, stop trying to shove your reading of this film down everyone's throat.

The Babadook is a perfect little film. Far superior to Hereditary.

I almost could not look at the son because of that nasty ass mole. All I saw was The Mole. Sad as the kid did a really great job. Anyway, it is clearly MY shortcoming, just find moles repulsive, if I had a mole on my face where he has one, I would cut it out with a razor blade or even a jagged piece of glass as soon as I was old enough to have a steady grip.

I read about this film on another message board I go to, and people there said how it was scary, and my local library had it on DVD, and I like horror films. I thought it was going to be about genealogy or someone inheriting some sort of weird rare disease, or some rare genetic abnormality and mental illness that I thought the daughter had.

The son played Alex Wolff is Caucasian but he just has an extremely Eastern European Jewish heritage, while all the other actor/actresses, do not at all. Wolff's acting is horrible and some scenes he's in are hilarious like when he smokes weed, and just how out of touch the writers were in that they had him playing a teenager and he and the sister did not act like normal kids/teens or have friends over to the family home, or really go places with friends besides school or to just one party-which it's funny how the mom forces the son to take his younger sister who is in elementary school or jr. highschool, to a highschool party and nobody who is a parent who cares about their children would actually do this.

Also the parents do not really behave like adults, we don't really see them outside of the home besides Toni's character and maybe one scene with the dad, and the parents apparently do not have any friends either.

To me it was more camp and funny-especially with certain scenes like before/after the party, a scene with the father and the mom fighting, and the ending.

Toni Collette is usually not bad as an actress, but in this film she's not that good at all, and is overly dramatic in histrionics, and the painting/construction her character was doing for a job went nowhere.

Rosemary's baby was great, and this is not like it at all.

That's true R320, also in the school classroom scenes where they are discussing the Ancient Greek myths, but despite understanding all of this I thought the film was just not that good for a horror film. If I were in highschool or in my early 20s in college and still into partying and smoking pot, it would have been the type of film I would have had friends over to watch and we would all smoke pot and drink some beer and laugh at it, or make up a smoking/drinking game to, like Wolff's character or the mom flips out, take another bong hit or drink a beer.

R378, the shining and black swan were not nearly as campy or bad as hereditary was.

R256, I'm from Philadelphia and everyone here has known about how much of a nutcase Ira Einhorn is for decades. When my dad was at UPenn getting his degree in the early 1970s, he went to hear him speak since it was some talk or discussion about environmentalism and multiple people were speaking and he said when Einhorn was being introduced some woman he was sitting near heard this and got up and immediately left. Einhorn loves to claim he invented Earth day or was some great environmental activist when in reality he was not any of these things at all and was a rambling nutcase so my dad left the event after hearing Einhorn go on about nothing but himself and how intelligent and great he is, when he was just some narcissistic sociopath who wound up murdering his ex. I used to work for a funeral home-not with the bodies my boss did that, and unless a body is refrigerated, and embalmed, it will start to stink especially if left in an attic. There have been serial killers like Kendall Francois who kept their victims in attics and the Francois family home was so decrepit, and unclean that when the decomposing body of one of his victims caused the ceiling to rot and maggots to fall down from the attic along with the smell of the bodies of his multiple victims, Kendall blamed it on a dead raccoon and none of his family members went up to the attic to clean it up or anything.

R383, or just go to a surgeon and have it safely removed instead?

I thought it was gripping and I liked the whole hereditary, mental illness, secret past-occult story line.

Yes R94 and R96, a friend I grew up with is allergic to peanuts and other types of nuts and he would carry an epi-pen with him in school, or if his mom was driving us somewhere she had one in her car and later when he drove he would carry one in his car.

It is funny how the characters see the walnuts being chopped up at the party being put into a cake-that's somehow magically finished baking in the oven from the time they arrive to the few minutes later, when Peter leaves to go smoke pot with the girl he has a crush on or wants to bone who he knows from school.

Who said that cake is the same cake? There could be more than one cake baking, R386, plus they didn't see the walnuts being chopped up-do you honestly think Peter would tell his sister to eat the cake knowing that there might be nuts in it?

I just let a huge fart. hee hee.

[quote]And the movie didn't "make the grandma the ultimate villain." It makes schizophrenia the ultimate villain.

WTF, how is the grandma not the villain? Her actions killed her whole family. And nowhere in the movie did it say the grandma was schizophrenic. NO ONE in the movie was schizophrenic.

That poster has been debunked earlier in the thread, R389, using quotes by the writer/director. YOU are the ultimate villain.

Why all this talk about mental illness? The film didn't even talk about mental illness. How come other horror films don't have the mental illness explanation put on them. All the children in It were delusional thinking some clown was after them. Carrie was schizophrenic thinking she can move things with her mind and kill her classmates. The Exorcist was about a very mentally disturbed little girl who didn't take her pills.

R387, yes I do think he would have. Especially how he was pissed at the mom for making him take his kid sister to the highschool party, and for his sister cock blocking him with the girl he had a crush on at the party who he invited to smoke weed.

The film was a lot more campy and kitschy than actually scary and terrifying. Hereditary was not like Rosemary's baby at all, even if some critics tried to claim it was.

Why is someone here on DL convinced that Toni Collette's histrionics in Hereditary deserve an academy award? Or that the film is about people who are schizophranic/bipolar and in psychosis? The film was about possession by a demon or something, but unlike Rosemary's Baby, the original omen, the devils with Oliver Reed, dawn of the dead, lots of Vincent Price films, the wicker man, and the Exorcist it was neither original, fresh, or that scary.

The film was not about demon possession, you idiot. It was about mental illness. Many schizophanics *think* they see demons. Just look at all the crazy homeless on the street. Do you really think they are actually possessed by demons? Demons are NOT real!!!

No shit r394, neither are zombies, vampires, werewolves, and the multitude of other horror movie tropes, are you fucking kidding?

So we're in agreement this movie is about mental illness, not supernatural demon possession. No shit, indeed.

No r395, I am pointing out that suspension of disbelief is key in horror movies because nonsensical shit that would never really happen, does. It's not a fucking allegory, I don't know why you insist on that.

I didn't say it's an allegory. I say it is literally about mental illness. There is nothing supernatural about this movie.

THE director says no

But what does the director know r399? R398 has stated the movie's boundaries!

R400 your trolling rates a D-

And your movie analysis rates the same.

And you probably think Girl, Interrupted and Boy Erased are about the supernatural and demon possession too.

You are clearly mentally ill. The writer himself has stated that the movie IS NOT about mental illness. UP YOUR DOSE-I'm begging you.

This film would have been better had it actually been about everyone in the family being mentally ill with psychosis either from being bipolar, schizophrenic, or schizoaffective than demon possession-which has been shown in countless films the past 50+ years.

R405, that IS what the film is about. Hello, it's called Hereditary, mental illness is passed down from generation to generation. Toni Collette's brother had schizophrenia and thought there were voices in his head and it was passed on to her and her son.

You can't be helped.

Hereditary sucked, for all the reasons stated in this thread. If this movie becomes any kind of “classic”, then we will know that culture has taken a serious turn for the worse.

This is not a “deep” movie, it is not an anything-goes, Holy Mountain type, it is not Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist or even The shitty Babadook, and it is not an allegory or a metaphor for mental illness despite the insistence of an obviously mentally ill Datalounger. It’s just derivative, poorly written, and pretentious.

I can’t find the post in this thread, but the person who said that a movie like this has to earn its kooky ending hit the nail on the head. I’m going to try to find it without my increasingly hot iPhone exploding in my hands from me scrolling up and down this very long thread on this very mobile-unfriendly website, and copy it, if I can find it, in another reply because it’s worth reading again.

Here it is.

[quote]The movie is a failure. Not because it’s not scary (which it isn’t especially) but rather because it’s bad storytelling. When, in the last minutes of the film, you need a secondary character to explain everything to a primary character (aka “the audience”), you’ve failed miserably as a filmmaker. Movies are more than shots, and mood, and lighting, and performances. They’re STORIES.

[quote]The film is filled with atmosphere but at the end of the day it needs to all make sense without being ridiculous. You have to be a more talented director than Ari Aster to pull off an ending in a tree house filled with naked fat people and decapitated corpses. You have to earn an ending like that and this one wasn’t earned. It was just ridiculous. THAT’S why it’s getting a bad score .

r308's article only backs up the interpretation that HEREDITARY is a collection of hallucinations because it's about patients with medical schizophrenia!

What an idiot! I reiterate: the writer and director contrived this movie very carefully so it could fit BOTH a supernatural and schizophrenic interpretation, and we, the audience, can't know for sure!

[quote]Wolff succinctly explained, "But I feel like it's so interesting--Ari took the approach that she's not necessarily evil. She's actually scared, and she's just in this circumstance. She's born this way, and she doesn't feel connected to the rest of the world. And I think it's kind of a sick, twisted, true analogy about being on the outside and having a mental disorder."

See/ ANALOGY.

[quote]"I believe you should always interpret things as exactly what you're seeing, but it kind of doesn't matter, because whatever it is, it turns into f***ing chaos, and that's what it is," he continued. "Whatever's actually happening, the feeling is the hyperbole of absolute anarchy and the depths of guilt and the depths of trauma in a family, and feeling like you're cursed."

Now explain to me, if the people were not schizophrenic, and the demons were real in this movie, with real demonic powers, then WHY WERE HALF OF THE CULT MEMBERS TALKING TO DEAD CORPSES AS IF THEY WERE ALIVE AND STILL PART OF THE CULT?

Why wasn't Paimon, or any, other demon, able to bring the corpses back to life?

[italic]Finally[/italic] saw this movie. While I found it unsettling at times there were a couple of scenes that made me both creeped out and amused. Like when Annie was scuttling around the ceiling and banging her head really fast on the attic door.

It's probably too late to revive this discussion, but maybe someone has seen it only recently like me.

No one wants to talk about this movie anymore?!

I just watched this movie and I found it highly upsetting to say the least.

With regards to the backlash against the film, I'm an avid horror fan and participate in multiple horror forums. Both Hereditary and Midsommar were artificially hyped to high hell within the horror community. It was to the point of it being beyond obvious that many of the comments praising these films were from people being paid to do so. It was blatantly fabricated hype around them.

It started off with the spamming of horror forums over these films, including r/horror, then got even worse if you dare say something negative about either of these movies. Honestly, it was like dealing with trumptards, if you dare point out that trump is a liar and incompetent and should never have been elected president, they go balistic.

Ari Aster stans are way too full of themselves, they're like a cult in their own right.

The only scene that really got to me was the decapitation. Seeing Toni crawling/floating all over the house was funny. I still don't know how i feel about the ending.

Man, this thread has been a painful read. But I undertook to look into the DL take on this film because I just watched it twice - the first time on Friday, and again this afternoon, when I watched it with my best friend. Some observations:

■ The proper expression to denote 'things about a film that don't make sense to you' is 𝑛𝑜𝑡 '𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞.'

■ On this thread, virtually every objection of this type is easily answered by details that are offered within the film itself. These are often small details, apparently overlooked by various DLers who watched this film and then posted. For example, 'why did no one notice the smell of a decomposing body in the attic?' They did: the increasing unpleasant odor is remarked upon at least twice in the dialogue. 'Did the dog die?' Yes. Its body is lying in the yard at the end of the film. 'How do we know where Peter was driving Charlie?' Because, while driving, he told Charlie he was taking her to the hospital. Simple stuff, right there in the film. The key is that you have to pay attention.

Some of this stuff is common sense, understood with just a little reflection, like 'why didn't Peter call 911 when Charlie began wheezing?' Because he was at a party where all the teens were drinking and smoking pot. He himself was steeped in pot. Everyone in the entire house would have been busted, and everyone there would have blamed Peter. 'I'll just handle this myself, and nobody needs to get into trouble.' Classic young people reasoning.

■ Psychological vs supernatural: Ok, there's plenty of basis for going into this assuming it's explainable in terms of mental illness, but midway through the film, there's a definite cutoff point where it becomes obvious that it's supernatural. It happens when the glass starts to move at Joan's apartment. It's confirmed when Annie replicates the phenomena in front of her husband and her son. It's at this point that the attentive viewer needs to stop trying to bend what he's seeing in order to fit a naturalistic explanation, because it's plain that the film is going in a more fantastical direction.

■ 'King Paimon' is not sprung suddenly on the viewer without warning; from beginning to end, the film is littered with clues about the occult. The name of the demon is something one sees when Annie is going more thoroughly through her mom's things, two-thirds of the way through the film, and the book of 'Invocations' is held open sufficiently long for the viewer to read the passages explaining Paimon. There's no call to be taken by surprise at the end, when Peter is crowned and told he's King Paimon; no need for anyone to scream, 'WTF? WTF is this shit?' If they do, it's because they haven't been paying attention.

Back in the early 70s, 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 used to be steeped in this kind of stuff. Two vignettes within a single episode, Season Two, Episode Three. 'Since Aunt Ada Came To Stay' deals with metempsychosis - the transfer of the soul of an older witch into the body of a younger person, and the kinds of ritual steps taken in that pursuit - quite similar to the kinds of efforts to which the cult in 'Hereditary' goes to transfer King Paimon to Peter. The last segment in that episode, 'The Flip Side of Satan,' recites a long list of demonic names. Some are made up, while still others are lifted from 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺œ𝑡𝑖𝑎, the same tome of 17th century magic from which 'King Paimon' is drawn.

R416 has clearly done their research 🤓

It's a way overhyped movie. Toni Collette loses her shit and screams, that's basically it.

spoilers

This thread piqued my interest, so i watched the movie today. I love Toni Collette. The movie was creepy but not scary. If we are supposed to take the film literally, then why all the reference to mental illness in the movie? What were the miniatures supposed to represent? It's obvious it's symbolic but it kind of went over my head. Was it her job or just a hobby? When she made the miniature version of the accident scene w/her daughter i knew she was insane- instead of the movie just implying that she could be. The part where she floated headless into the tree house ruined the movie, it was just bad. The first 3/4 of the movie was really good. The last 1/4 was bad. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Midsommar.

R418 can you blame her?

[quote]If we are supposed to take the film literally, then why all the reference to mental illness in the movie?

R419, why does it have to be one or the other? The film postulates that the supernatural is real; the fact that Annie is mentally ill doesn't mitigate that. It simply makes her even less equipped to cope with what's happening. Remember 𝐋𝐞𝐭'𝐬 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 (1971)? Same thing.

[quote]What were the miniatures supposed to represent? It's obvious it's symbolic but it kind of went over my head.

It represents the family's lack of agency; that they are all as helpless as miniatures in a diorama, with supernatural forces being in control.

[quote]Was it her job or just a hobby?

She was using it as a form of self-therapy, a way of distancing herself from traumatic incidents in her life, turning them into vignettes. What she was doing had attracted the interest of the Carver Gallery. There's 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡 of artists whose work, for them, constitutes a form of therapy.

[quote]The part where she floated headless into the tree house ruined the movie, it was just bad.

It's odd that you choose that single instance as being the one which broke your sense of probability, and not, say, her crawling across the ceiling like Spiderman, or sawing her own head off. It's not a poorly-done effect, as though one could see the wires pulling the body. Several voices on this thread express the same thought, over and over, in much the same terms, but fail to make clear what they think is wrong with it. When this happens on a thread, usually it's a sock problem. And for whatever reason, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 here is deeply invested in shitting on this film, and in trying to gaslight those who appreciated it.

Thank you R421 for clarifying my questions about the movie. I didn't mean to shit on it, i thought 3/4 of the film was very good. I guess the part with her floating headless up to the tree house was just kind of silly as opposed to scary. Maybe reading a few posts on this thread kind of put that part subconsciously in my brain.

R96, if it's better not to think about the plot, doesn't that invalidate this whole thread?

I enjoyed reading, but I'll never see this film 'cause I scared.

After reading the articles cited, I don't think much of Aster. Doesn't he look like an incel? Midsommar was stupid.

[quote]Maybe reading a few posts on this thread kind of put that part subconsciously in my brain.

R422, maybe. But if that's the case, it's testimony to the toxic effect of internet trolling, of organized efforts to stampede public opinion, almost always in expressing negative opinions of films, to sway public perception of them. The susceptibility of readers is what the trolls are counting on. The intent is to damage potential box office draw, as for example, the Star Wars Prequels and Sequels, as a way of damaging the companies producing the films, and by extension, the American economy. It isn't personal, though if one reads the original seeding comments, it certainly sounds that way. And it has definitely had a souring effect on the industry.

It's why IMDb ultimately had to bring its message boards to an end. They had become weaponized against the film industry, as a field of battle whereupon hatred for upcoming or newly released films could be sown. It's an unfortunate fact of human nature that contempt is more contagious than admiration; people love to hate.

Not everything is admirable--i.e. Trump, although many would argue that. "Hate" isn't implied in critique--it can be a form of love to wish to see better output from people with megaphones.