In Retrospect: Hereditary
Film
Coming almost four full years after his epic, by-the-light of day folk horror film Midsommar, writer and director Ari Aster is back with his widely anticipated third feature film, Beau Is Afraid. Clocking in with a dauntless 3-hour runtime and starring the simply unmissable Joaquin Phoenix, Beau Is Afraid, is a surrealist black comedy horror film that is co-produced and distributed by A24, the independent studio behind Aster's two previous films, Hereditary and Midsommar. In honor of this premiere, let's revisit Aster's challenging but rewarding filmography. First up is Hereditary, his feature film debut from 2018, which is now considered not only a modern horror classic, but one of the signature genre films of the 21st century.
Spoilers aplenty
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.
Annie Graham (Toni Collette) is a work-from-home miniature artist who lives with her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their 16-year-old son Peter (Alex Wolff), and their 13-year-old daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Annie's mother, Ellen, has recently died after a long hospice stay in the Graham home. The film opens with her funeral, and as Annie delivers a eulogy to the large number of people in attendance, she offhandedly speculates that her mother would be "a little suspicious to see so many strange new faces." Annie reflects on how Ellen was a secretive and private woman, someone who was difficult to read and was incredibly stubborn, which maybe explains Annie's own tendencies. Her sentiment is more bitter than it is sweet, which is to be expected given what we soon learn about their tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.
From the jump, it is apparent that Annie is a severely damaged woman in mourning who is reckoning with and, in turn, perpetuating dysfunction within her family. She shows signs of mental illness, though any substantive details are left mostly unremarked upon. In her bereavement, Annie attends a support group to address her feelings of intense estrangement and grief -- there are years of unresolved emotional deprivation and manipulation for her to work through. She publicly recalls how Ellen was altogether absent from the family, then deliberately cut off when Peter was born per Steve's 'no contact' rule; then during Annie's second pregnancy, she reentered the picture and became immediately involved and overly infatuated with Charlie. Annie questions why she "gave her (Ellen) my daughter, who she immediately stabbed her hooks into," which sounds like a bit of guilt-ridden second-guessing that she has probably asked herself before. What does she mean by 'stabbed her hooks into'? Why did Annie sever ties with her mother only to let her back in entirely? Is she speaking from a point of regret or remorse? Unpacking death and all its mysteries is one thing, but unpacking life and our past decisions can be even more complicated.
But then life tries to go on. When she isn't attending the support group, Annie can be found in isolation working meticulously on her miniatures -- it's important to remember that she's an artist with a deadline. Annie's elaborate dioramas become increasingly self-reflective of her own deteriorating headspace, serving as little snapshots into her own personal nightmares and haunting insecurities. While hardwork and artistic expression can be an escapism from one's own trauma, the returns may be more hurtful than helpful. Amidst her mourning, Annie's family is left to the wayside: Steve, a psychiatrist, is trying to keep the family together, Peter is navigating his teenage dirtbag years, while Charlie is... well, I don't know what Charlie is doing. It doesn't seem like anyone really knows what the deal is with Charlie. She appears to have some unexplained but serious congenital abnormalities. Whatever the case may be, she is by no means a typically developing child.
Before long, all hell breaks loose; and after an unfortunate incident with some nut-abundant chocolate cake and a sigil telephone pole, it becomes painfully obvious how painful things are about to become. Annie's descent into the darkness of her mother's perversities and wickedness starts to feel like an insurmountable labyrinth of skin-crawling, "what-in-the-actual-fuck" moments. Scenes begin moving from one to the next with an insomniac paranoia, and it is oftentimes unclear to decipher what is real from what is not. Other sequences start or end with a kind of picture-in-picture effect, where the intricate miniature dioramas are used to further disorient the viewer. Is Annie awake? Is she on the verge of- or in the midst of a nervous breakdown? Suspense built on ambiguity is far more jarring than a series of simple jump scares (but don't worry, there are plenty of those, too). And despite all the distractions and red herrings, the film doesn't get stuck in muddling through exposition and manages to alchemize slow-burn anxiety with breakneck intensity (there absolutely no puns intended here, I promise).
The unflinching truth at the center of Hereditary is that nothing happens by accident -- in fact, everything is by design. The Graham family isn't just running into a bit of bad luck or strange happenstance; if that were the case, this would be just another run-of-the-mill horror movie. No, the stakes here are biblical, and the transgressions are irreparable. As tragedy unfolds, the film gradually reveals itself to be an acute family drama dressed up as a psychologically-twisted, occultist thriller -- thematically speaking, this is a sheep dressed in wolf's clothing. Hereditary bluntly confronts the concept of transgenerational trauma head-on, wherein one's sins are be passed down and inherited from one generation to the next. From both a filmmaking and storytelling perspective, Aster is uncompromising in the defense and delivery of his almost deceptively simple working thesis -- it's all right there in the title, is it not? And his final conclusions, while obviously open to interpretation, prove to be especially damning.
By the time Colin Stetson's screeching score reaches its climax in "Reborn" for the final sequence, your brain will probably be rattling around in your skull to the point you won't be able to think straight. And perhaps the scariest part of this movie might be how long it may sit with you after the credits roll. Part of me has never fully recovered from the first time I watched it. And even on my most recent rewatch, I'm still wincing from those scars.
Hereditary feels like the distillation of a hundred great movie ideas all smashed into one. You don't have to look too hard to see the shadows of Bergman, Carpenter, and Kubrick reverberating through every frame. Five years later and this still is one of my slam dunk horror recommendations to those looking for a panic-induced evening. And I'd bet that five years from now this will still pack quite the punch and feel just as fresh as it does right now.
And because I didn't explicitly mention it earlier, let me just say that Toni Collette was unforgivably snubbed of an Oscar nomination for her astonishing performance in this film.
Froth
In case I didn't make this point clearly enough, this movie is DISTURBING. Seriously, half the shit that happens in this is permanently imprinted into my brain and part of me wishes for the days where I didn't have some of these mental images to keep me up at night. Luckily, I cracked open a Beezer from Old Irving Park Brewing Co., a citrus-forward hazy, pulpy delight to ease the stress of my viewing. With just enough bitterness to keep you interested, the key word to describe this is zesty, with its orangey body and foamy head. Don't drink this one too fast -- especially if you're pregaming a séance with the demon King Paimon.
Beezer New England IPA | 6.9% ABV Old Irving Brewing Co. @oldirvingbrewing
