In Danse Macabre (1981), Stephen King’s nonfiction book about the horror genre, he says that if a horror movie is going to work and be memorable, there has to be something beyond spatter, a story that functions on a symbolic level to help us understand our deepest fears. In Hereditary (2018), written and directed by Ari Aster, grief, mental illness, and the challenges of motherhood are the subconscious fears that erupt after the family suffers one loss after another.
The plot and strained family dynamics of Hereditary unfold after the death of the Graham family’s matriarch. The film opens with the obituary of the 78-year old grandmother, who is described by her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette), during the funeral as having been a “very secretive” and “very private woman.” The first 30 minutes of the film focus on how the rest of the family deals with her death. The father, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), initially tries to comfort his wife and family, while the son, Peter (Alex Wolff), spends much of his time getting stoned and going to parties. The daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who had the closest relationship with the grandmother, asks her mother, “Who’s going to take care of me?” Annie deals with her mother’s death by throwing herself into her work, creating miniature houses for a scheduled art show opening. As the film progresses, the miniatures mirror the events of the film, and the deadline to finish the work only creates added pressure on an already stressed mother.
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Eventually, Annie attends a grief support group, where she confesses that her father starved himself due to depression, her schizophrenic brother hanged himself and blamed the mother, claiming she put voices inside of him, and her mother became estranged from the family over time. Her grief is only compounded when something unthinkable happens in the present—and from that point on the tension escalates. Hereditary then starts to blend reality with the supernatural, especially after Annie befriends a psychic medium, Joan (Ann Dowd), who also dabbled in the occult with the grandmother. Annie eventually summons someone from the great beyond, and it becomes hard to tell what’s a dream, reality, or the supernatural. At this point, the film becomes a real examination of grief and the challenges of motherhood.
Annie (Toni Collette) during the dinner scene
Hereditary is filled with the presence of the dead, and it’s about dealing with the dead in your family as well as the living. Near the conclusion of the film, Annie tries to burn the sketch book of someone she loved to sever a supernatural connection and its deadly effects on her family. Yet, she can’t do it, and when she enlists Steve to help her, he refuses and threatens to call the police on her. The sketch book becomes symbolic of the dead, a possession left behind, something real and physical that neither Annie or Steve can destroy in order to move on.
Charlie (Milly Shapiro)
The possession scenes and Annie’s frazzled mental state are comparable to Jennifer Kent’s 2014 film The Babadook, especially because both films show the challenges of motherhood. At one point in Hereditary, Annie blurts out to Peter that she didn’t want to have him and she tried to have a miscarriage. It’s unclear if this scene is a dream, but regardless, it shows one of the deepest fears lurking in Annie’s subconscious, that she was never ready to become a mother and she isn’t living up to the task. In another scene, Annie confesses to Joan that during a sleepwalking spell years ago, she doused Charlie, Peter, and herself with paint thinner and woke up when she struck the match.
Amelia (Essie Davis) in The Babadook
Like Amelia (Essie Davis), the mother in The Babadook, Annie really has no one to turn to for help in parenting. Unlike Amelia, who is a single mother, Annie does have a family, but her son spends much of his time partying and getting high. Her husband, instead of being supportive, distances himself from her the more her mental state deteriorates. Both films use the possession trope when the challenges of motherhood and trying to keep a family together become too much for the female protagonists.
In in an interview with Bloody-Disgusting, Aster said, “The film’s primary aim has always been to upset audiences on a very deep level.” Hereditary has its share of scares and disturbing scenes, but the film’s real strength is its exploration of grief, mental illness, and motherhood. Its most memorable scenes occur when Annie is essentially abandoned by her family, especially her husband, at a time when she just needs someone to listen to her and help her grieve. Collette’s performance is mesmerizing and horrifying.
After one last shocking scene near the conclusion, which is a nice nod to Rosemary’s Baby, the camera pulls back to another one of Annie’s miniature houses, which mimics the jarring scene that just unfolded. In the last shot, viewers are left wondering if that scene actually happened or was it something Annie created for her art, one final manifestation of her anger and grief.
Grade: A
You can stream Hereditary on Amazon:
Brian Fanelli is a poet and essayist whose works has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, The Paterson Literary Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. His latest collection of poems, Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books), won the 2017 Devil’s Kitchen Poetry Prize. Brian has an M.F.A from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton University. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Lackawanna College. He blogs about literature and horror movies at www.brianfanelli.com.
For more on motherhood in the horror film, check out our posts on Don’t Knock Twice (2016) and motherhood and The Ones Below (2015) and motherhood.
