Review of Hereditary, directed by Ari Aster

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about movies and what they mean to me, I always go back to the thought of what it was like to watch certain movies. For some people, like a concert or important event, they remember watching a certain movie for the first time, who they were with, and how it unfolded.

For me, Hereditary was first watched in Iowa City, Iowa. It was 2019, and I had been selected for a fully funded program at the University of Iowa to meet Pakistani, American, and Indian writers who had been brought together to discuss creative writing and the worlds we came from.

One night, we wanted to have a movie night, so we had a room booked at the university. We ended up picking Hereditary as the movie we were going to watch, and then we all sat back and got comfortable as the movie began playing on the big screen. That was a night full of laughter and screams, especially when we got to the more gory parts of the movie.

I was thinking a lot about that, and because I had recently revisited Midsommar, I decided to go ahead and pick up Hereditary again to cash in on that nostalgia factor yet again. And nostalgia it did give me, even if the movie itself can be a bit horrifying to the average person.

Let’s get into the review!

After the death of a grandmother, one family finds themselves in a horrifying situation.

This movie begins with the death of the main character, Annie’s, mother. She attends the funeral with her husband Steve, and their two kids Peter and Charlie. Annie did not have the best relationship with her mother, so when they roll up to the funeral, ready to get it over with, she’s shocked to see so many people attending to mourn her mother.

Annie begins attending a bereavement group and discusses how her mother and her did not have a good relationship, especially after Charlie’s birth. While she does this, Steve gets a phone call saying that Ellen, Annie’s mother, had her grave desecrated. They don’t know who did it, so he does not tell Annie.

Peter tries to go to a party, and Annie tells him he has to bring Charlie. Angry at that, he leaves Charlie on her own in there, and she then eats a cake with walnuts. Turns out she has a severe nut allergy and is going into shock, so he takes her into the car and then speeds down a road to the hospital.

As she sticks her head out the window, gasping for air, he drives past a telephone pole. She is decapitated on the spot, and then Peter drives home without the head and just the body. He leaves her body in the car for some reason, and Annie finds it the next day.

After Charlie’s funeral, the family begins to fall apart. Peter blames himself for his sister’s death, and Annie isn’t too happy with him either because it is kind of his fault she died. Steve is trying to get everyone to calm down, and at Annie’s bereavement group, she meets someone named Joan.

Joan tells her that she can have a seance to talk to Charlie’s ghost, and Annie convinces the family to do it that night. Objects begin moving in the middle of it, but then Annie is possessed by a ghost with Charlie’s voice. After that moment, Peter is haunted by the supernatural, and Annie becomes convinced Charlie’s spirit wants revenge.

As she throws Charlie’s sketchbook, which shows messages threatening her brother, Annie chucks it into the fireplace. Her clothing catches on fire instead, and it only stops when she pulls the book out. She then goes through her mother’s belongings, and discovers that her mother was the head of a coven.

There’s also another book about the demon king, who wants a male host. She also finds her mother’s body without a head in the attic. Joan shows up at Peter’s school and tries to kick his spirit out of his body for the demon king, and he slams his head against the desk and breaks his nose.

Annie tells Steven what is going on, and he refuses to throw the book into the fire. When she does it instead, he bursts into flames, and Annie becomes possessed, watching as he dies. Coven members gather around the house, and Peter wakes up at dusk.

He finds his father’s corpse, and spots the coven members. Annie, now possessed chases him, and then beheads herself when they get into the attic. Peter jumps out the window, dying on the spot, and a glowing orb enters his body.

With the attitude of Charlie, he follows a headless corpse to the treehouse, where everyone else is gathered. Joan puts a crown on him and addresses him as Charlie, saying that Charlie is the demon king. They then declare him the demon king, and the film ends.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned in the Midsommar review, I preferred that movie over this one. If you have a penchant for occult and slasher films, I think you’re going to love this one a lot more than I did.

I can handle gore and some shocking content, but I think this film just didn’t click all the right buttons for me. I prefer movies that force you to think more in the horror realm, and while there were some elements of that in this movie, it didn’t satisfy me.

Kudos to you though if you liked it more than I did. Neither of us are wrong, we just have different taste. If this sounds right up your alley and you haven’t seen it, go ahead and watch it.

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