I’m pretty sure that the book was being actively protected by a supernatural force, not a set spell. So when she cared about staying alive, it set her on fire to discourage her. She made up her mind to sacrifice herself, well, pick something she’s not okay with losing.
Sheer malice. Her noblest intentions are thwarted. Paimon is manipulating her throughout the movie, as per the classroom lecture in the opening of the movie about Theseus. In the end, Hereditary is about how a woman is used as a puppet to destroy, to sacrifice, her own family. The exact opposite of Poltergeist, where the woman saves her family. In the opening of the movie, she’s reassures her daughter that she’ll take care of her. Yet she sends Charlie to the party. She gets Gabriel Byrne immolated. She stalks Peter as a possessed flying self-decapitating puppet.
I don’t think Hereditary is that kind of rules based movie. Paimon is a supernatural force along the lines of the demon in Paranormal Activity. As the ghost hunter explains in that movie, ghosts are manifestations of human beings. We can understand them. But demons are something else, something inhuman and malicious that we can’t possibly understand.
-Tom
But Toni Colette thinks it is, and by extension we, the audience, think it is (or at least I did). If there was never anything she (or anyone) could have done to defeat the demon, then why is the movie interesting? It’s basically just Paimon fucking with them until he inevitably wins?
Well, I can’t really do anything with the word “interesting”. But it was an intentional choice, and it seems to me helplessness is a fundamental element of horror. But I would refer you again to one of the two classroom lectures that explain exactly what you’re seeing. Is it more or less tragic if the hero can do anything about his fate? Furthermore, the metaphor set up in the opening shot and repeated a couple of times – most notably and gruesomely in the final shot – is one of puppets, or dolls.
-Tom
Well, ok, I mean, I accept that what you’re saying about the movie is almost certainly correct. It doesn’t help me like the movie more, though. I mean, think about a movie like Cabin in the Woods, where the protagonists are up against a vastly superior force (actually two: the ‘cultists’ and the demon), and they successfully defeat the one, and make a conscious choice not to defeat the other, though they could. Or It Follows, where, yes, their fate is probably sealed, but the things they do still matter, they can postpone it.
So the scene where Gabriel Byrne catches fire is pretty much what I thought it was – the movie telling you that there are no rules, anything can happen, and nothing any of the characters do matter (although, as you say, it isn’t the only thing in the movie that tells you that). It’s just that, for me, that ruined the movie, but obviously it didn’t for you.
And also maybe ‘ruined’ is too strong. I still think the first act is fantastic. I think I’m just done with it after that.
Halluincation? Mental illness? Cultist everywhere? Remember Annie was making a joke about how so many people she didn’t know showed up in her mother’s funeral? That is because of the cultists in her mother’s life Annie knew nothing about.
Right from the start, I do not deny that there is supernatural explanation. My position has always that it can be interpreted BOTH WAYS. While you keep insisting that the supernatural is the ONLY explanation, I keep presenting segments of the movie where there is mundane, earthly explanation. And your quotes KEEP IGNORING THEM. The scene where Annie thought Peter was covered in ants? No that was her having a nightmare and sleep walking. Natural explanation. Etc. etc.
The movie is more clever than you give it credit. The ambiguity between the natural and supernatural keeps audience guessing: was that REALLY granny’s ghost? was that REALLY burning in the field. What is that light? It is the kind of whopper The Conjuring 2 tried to pull: you mean the family created the haunting as a hoax rather than real haunting? wtf then is with the nun? In the end everything tied together in a nice gift, but the journey, rather than the destination, is the reward.
Ok I may have misremembered it, but that is EVEN MORE consistent with the natural explanation: cultists are EVERYWHERE. They even etched that symbol into a pole. Because you NEVER see the pole after Charlie was killed. Only the severed head. AFTER THE FACT you never really know if the pole with the cultist symbol is the one that killed Charlie.
I think we are done here. If you cannot see that the movie, up until the end, can be interpreted both ways, then nothing I can say can convince you. Maybe try watching it again with the assumption that the director is trying to play it both ways? Because with me going to the movie with no assumption, my interpretation is that the movie is deliberately ambiguous between psychological horror and supernatural horror. It is NOT JUST a slow burn supernatural. And the movie is better for it.
I read on the interweb that some guy was complaining that the Russian translation of the title is “Reincarnation”, and it spoiled the movie. I agree. The title itself is trying to hide its supernatural ambition, and it is better that way.
Well, that’s not my goal! Although I would argue that the things you’re complaining about are intentional on the director’s part and not an oversight or even necessarily a “flaw”. In the argot of computer talk, they’re features, not bugs.
But, sure, I can completely understand someone not being into Hereditary. It’s arthouse horror and it bucks the trend of a lot of conventional horror. There’s a reason it got a D on Cinemascore. :)
The director makes it clear using the language of cinema that what’s happening is supernatural. If you didn’t notice it, that’s fine. Hereditary has a lot of nuance and it’s easy to miss things. I know I did the first time I saw it!
However, I’ve shown you what you missed, posted a few screenshots for you, and reminded you of some stuff you forgot or got wrong. If you still want to stick to your interpretation, that’s fine with me. You can interpret your entertainment any way you like! I honestly don’t mind!
But some of what you’re claiming flies in the face of what Ari Aster wrote and shot. You’re mistaking subtlety for ambiguity, which is a common mistake, especially if you’re not engaged by something.
I’ve seen Hereditary probably eight times, four of them when it was running in theaters and had my complete attention. You?
-Tom
Yeah, horses for courses. Sometimes I like stuff that sucks, and sometimes I dislike stuff that’s good. Here I stand, I can do no other.
Let me know if you ever want me to hold forth about how Armageddon is totally awesome and Citizen Kane is lame and boring. Also, Chupacabra Terror is Giancarlo Esposito at his best. I’ve seen that one at least eight times, too!
-Tom
Is it because Owen Wilson loves Jethro Tull?
Any chance you’re talking about my comment #39 in this very thread?
I’m on Tom’s side here. I think it’s pretty obvious that something supernatural is happening in the movie. You could argue that the movie would be better if it kept audience guessing, but that’s not what it was striving for. The title has nothing to do with this.
So now I know what Tom calls “uncomfortable detours”.
Jesus.
Finally saw this last night! Still processing… it’s a deeply interesting movie.
Paimon is a trickster demon, right? Fucking with them and breaking the rules (like which person burns when the book burns) is decidedly his M.O.!
Armageddon is great (as an entertaining, formulaic blockbusteR) right up until Buscemi gets space terrors and ruins the ending sequence because nobody had a good idea. Then it’s just dumb all the way in. “Ya’ll ain’t ever gonna catch Papa Bear”.
So I watched Hereditary recently, finally.
The fact that the movie is secretly all about how inexorably fucked the poor family are is inarguable, but I agree you don’t see it until the very end. And it’s what makes it so interesting. I thought the Gabrien Byrne Book Burning was weird until I thought some more about all of this (I think I said this in the “what horror movie are you watching” thread) and remembered how hard they decidedly hammered home that Paimon was a trickster. And all the ways the movie was clearly showing the manipulations that lead to this.
I love the scene wheen Peter freaks out in class (the “cluck” tic sounding at that moment was, for me, completely terrifying and got my hackles up super big time) and walks outside and you see what’s her face shouting something but can’t quite make it out. It almost sounds like “Paimon get out” but you know beter and you know itg was “Peter get out” and while you already suspect she’s not on the up and up at this point you figure everything is starting to go decidedly south and poor Peter. I mean who fucking exercises the person who was born in a body? Cultists of demon kings do, apparently. God, what a bunch of assholes.
I love how the backstory with mom is revealed. Mostly in therapy - where the entire thrust of the movie is sort of casually laid out before you can grok it - a few conversations with uh Joan is it (couldn’t remember her name but she was terrific) , I think a conversation with Peter.
Poor Toni Collete tries so hard. To cope. To help her family cope. To help her family fucking survive. But like the song says “the dice was loaded from the start”.
This is a movie I have come to like more than I did in hindsight, as I think more about the movie. I and I always appreciate movies -especially horror movies - when they leave me thinking like this. I mean we actually believe there’s a chance, at points, that the family might survive this. And it’s all a carefuly crafted lie.
A lot of movies have used cultists manipulating events as part of their stories. But I don’t think any of them do it as well as Hereditary and yes I include Rosemary’s baby. There, the key element is human greed/vulerability (he’s a struggling actor who can’t fully provide for his family, so they appeal and he sells out his wife because, sure, how bad can it be and it will be worth it). That’s compelling in a different way, sure. But never has any movie situation been so thoroughly set up as this one, have the decisions that were made been so concisely and clearly laid out and follow-able (at the end).
It’s sort of amazing.
I think you have to watch Hereditary at least twice before you can accurately discuss it in detail. The second watch just so you can analyze every scene with the ending in mind.
Saw Hereditary again for the third time, this time showing it to my local girlfriend, who isn’t usually a horror person and is, unlike the other people I’ve seen it with, a parent. I was nervous - she can be picky about her movies, has sometimes very different takes than I do, and with the parent thing and being (in her own words) avoidant of horror movies with children I felt like she might have a really bad time.
She loved it. And, although I was originally very lukewarm on Hereditary, now that I’ve seen it a couple more times, so do I.
That first time I missed so many of those little details. And having done so, I do think it’s pretty easy to see the movie as a non-supernatural exploration of hereditary mental illness until it goes loud at the end. I don’t think it ever is that. I don’t think it’s ever trying to mislead you about what it actually is. Knowing what was going to happen, the signs start almost immediately. But it also doesn’t grip you by the shoulders and direct your view at those signs, for the most part (I still missed that Paimon symbol on the pole this time), until near the very end. And so that first time around it read like a harrowing story of a family falling apart around tragedy until it suddenly left turned into wild Satanic horrorshow and I was like “okay, some of that was compelling and there are some creepy shots in the last several minutes, but that felt really random and weird and I don’t know how I feel about this.”
Then I listened to the Watch Out For Fireballs guys do a podcast analyzing it scene by scene, and watched it again and holy cats the difference. And this third time…I no longer had a visceral response to any of it but I could appreciate the incredible amounts of craft and the very careful construction and all the hints and little details you’re presented without them being highlighted as important and all the little ways Ari Aster twists the knife and gosh it’s so good. And my girlfriend, while she doesn’t have the advantage of multiple viewings, did catch more of that stuff up front (with a couple nudges from me but I tried not to spoil anything) and has seen Rosemary’s Baby, unlike me, and apparently has very fond associations with the Joan Mitchell song at the end and was like “oh that’s twisted” when that came up. So she was very impressed. I can’t say as I got that but I’m glad it’s just as deliberate as the rest.
Hereditary is one of my favorite movies. Full stop. No qualification as a horror movie or anything. Just one of my favorite movies overall.
Oh, I’m so glad you called this out! I loved their Hereditary episode, and it also greatly deepened my appreciation of the film.
Oooh, which podcast or episode was it?? Do they do a movie one also or was it on WOFF?
They have a Patreon-only monthly horror show, Unfilmable.