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Posted on October 6, 2018

Hereditary as Folk Horror

Guest Post

In a recent post on Ari Aster’s debut film Hereditary (2018), Brian Fanelli contends that “grief, mental illness, and the challenges of motherhood are the subconscious fears that erupt after the family suffers one loss after another.” Fanelli thus summarizes the traits passed down through the generations in the film; he also implicitly reads the text as an addition to a canon that follows what Dawn Keetley has identified as “an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood” and, on a larger scale, to what genre critics such as Tony Williams and Kimberly Jackson call “the family horror film.” I argue that a conjoined reading of these ideas in the context of the movie’s central horror plot—possession by a mythological demon as a result of ritualistic ceremonies—situates Hereditary within yet another new (or rather, revived) field in horror studies: folk horror.

Posted on June 25, 2018

Hereditary and the Changeling Myth

Guest Post

Before we meet Charlie (Milly Shapiro), the younger of the Graham family’s children in Ari Aster’s 2018 film Hereditary, we’re already worried about her. It’s the morning of her grandmother’s funeral, and her father, Steve, played by Gabriel Byrne, can’t find her anywhere. Exasperated, he finally wakes Charlie in the treehouse. “You could catch pneumonia!” he warns.

“It’s okay,” she says, but Charlie is not okay.

She evinces a flat affect—Charlie is not so much passive aggressive as just passive. She couples this quality with a pathological carelessness. At 13, Charlie demonstrates less concern about her serious food allergy than many 5 year-olds. Constantly munching on sweets, she has an appetite for the types of food that could be fatal to her. Charlie’s radical insouciance seems to suggest that she has inherited the family’s history of mental disorder, but her troubles resist diagnosis. She doesn’t seem depressed. Is she on the autism spectrum? The characters of Hereditary overtly reference a number of mental disorders, but never one in regard to Charlie.

Posted on June 23, 2018

Decapitation in Upgrade, First Reformed & Hereditary

Guest Post

Three movies that happen to be playing in multiplexes this week have a surprising connection. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018) is a sci-fi action film, First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017) is a spiritual drama with a dark comedic streak, and Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) is a horror film with plenty of family drama for seasoning. When I saw all three in the same weekend I thought I was programming a few days of very different movies, and they are that indeed. But they all feature a particular variety of body horror that brings them into conversation with each other. Not only does the same gruesome thing happen to a character in each film, but it also happens at roughly the same time in each film. If you’re looking to avoid spoilers on these movies, I would skip the section about the ones you have not yet seen, although I won’t be discussing the endings. Instead, I’ll examine how this form of body horror emphasizes the film’s themes and ideas.

Posted on June 11, 2018

Hereditary: Grief and Motherhood

Guest Post

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.