Hereditary Movie Review - Is Hereditary scary or disturbing?
Hereditary
Movie review
Hereditary Introduction:
Released in 2018, directed
by Ari Aster, Hereditary is one of its kind film in the horror genre. A slow
burner, unnerving and creepy, hereditary has a great cast, Toni Colette (Annie),
Gabriel Byrne ( Steve), Alex Wolff (Peter), Milly Shapiro (Charlie). With its
beautiful cinematography and thought-provoking narrative, this film has left an
indelible mark on the genre.
Hereditary Plot summary
Hereditary is about what we
inherit from our bloodlines. As the title suggest, we assume that the things
passed down to Annie’s family is mixture of physical and psychological illness
but as the film progresses, we find out that the Grain family has inherited something
far more sinister.
Hereditary Detailed plot:
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The troubled Grain family
deals with the loss of Annie’s secretive mother who they were not close with.
After funeral of Ellen, Annie delivers a strange eulogy saying she does not
recognize half of the people attending which will make sense towards the film’s
conclusion. Annie and others do not really feel too much grief on passing of
Ellen, except Charlie because she was really close to her grandmother since
birth, her grandmother even being breastfeeding her which is super creepy but
comes around later in the film.
A few days later Steve
gets to know that Ellen’ grave has been desecrated, he hides this from his wife
not wanting to put too much pressure on her. He sees an apparition of Ellen and
suggests his wife to join this support group for people dealing with grief.
During the first session Annie tells how her family has been dealing with
mental illness, her father died when Annie was a baby because he suffered from
psychotic depression, her bother suffered from schizophrenia and hung himself
in his mother’s bedroom leaving behind a note saying that their mother was
trying to put people in his head. Annie’s mother also suffered from
dissociative identity disorder. She kept her distance from Ellen hoping these
problems were in hereditary but her mother snuck back in their life when
Charlie was born.
Peter lies to Annie about
going to a school event resulting in Annie forcing him to take Charlie with
him, he takes her sister to a school party where she eats cake which triggers
her peanut allergy and she experience anaphylactic shock realizing that she was
struggling to breathe, Peter rushes to take her to hospital but when he swerved
to avoid a dead animal on the road Charlie who would have stuck her head out
the window foe fresh air is suddenly and shockingly decapitated by a pole.
Peter silently deals with
grief of losing his sister where Annie seeks help through trying to contact the
dead spirit of her daughter which a friend from support group shows her how to.
Annie performs the rituals with Steve and Peter, both get scared and asks her
to stop. Peter starts seeing Charlie and this mysterious white light.
Annie gets obsessed with
wanting to reconnect with her dead daughter while Peter’s mental health
degrade. Both mother and son start to distance from themselves to the point
where Annie says that Peter was a mistake. Steve also deals with all this
trauma silently.
Towards the ending, Annie
understands that the demon is here to take Peter and she tries to destroy
Charlie’s drawing book where Charlie drew Peter’s face with cross on his eyes.
Failing to destroy the
book, Annie gets possessed and Steve dies while Annie tries to burn it for the
second time. She starts to haunt Peter, which ultimately leads to Peter getting
possessed by the demon.
Hereditary Conclusion:
Ellen was in this cult
group who worshiped King Paimon. What we know from the film, Ellen tried to use
her own son for possession but he committed suicide. She later got close to
Charlie, drugged her from beginning and made her a host for King Paimon. But in
the film we get to know that the demon needs a ‘male host’ so Charlie wasn’t
really suitable.
After Ellen’s death, Annie
gets twisted in the same. She performs the ceremony at her house to summon
Charlie’s spirit and welcomes the demon too.
Ellen’s grave gets
decapitated. Charlie hits her head in pole and gets decapitated, Annie cuts her
head from a string and thus three heads for King Paimon.
When Annie haunts Peter,
he jumps of the window seeing his mother cut her own head while levitating in
the attic. He dies on the spot and Charlie’s spirit possesses the body. He
later goes to the treehouse Charlie used to spend most of her time at. There he
sees cult members stripped naked praying to a statue of King Paimon with
Charlie’s head on top and Annie and Ellen’s beheaded bodies bowing down to it.
The movie ends with Peter being given title of the demon and the family dying.
What makes the film
different is the way story is being told, it doesn’t have unnecessary jump
scares, everything is plain sight but not revealed until the suspense gets
build. Beautifully shot and great acting, Hereditary has became one of my favorite
horror film.
You can watch it on PRIME.
Check out more Movie Reviews-
SPIDER-MAN ACROSS THE SPIDER VERSE : MOVIE REVIEW
AIR- MOVIE REVIEW | THE MOVIE BASED ON A TRUE STORY
The Pope’s Exorcist- Movie Review
Comments
Post a Comment