I have a new favorite horror movie: Hereditary, by writer and director Ari Aster.
I didn’t love the movie the first time I saw it; the ending was profoundly disappointing. Doubly so because the movie had been so good up to that point. The story was character driven and the actors gave stunningly good performances. Also, Ari Aster infused the movie with what I want to call “nihilistic realism.” A sense of doom seemed to flow off the screen. The inventive film soundtrack helped create this effect. My favorite thing of all was that Hereditary was stuffed to the brim with delicious easter eggs.
In short, Hereditary had seemed to me--right up to the end--to be one of the best movies (of any genre) I had seen in years.
And then THAT ending happened and I was bitterly disappointed. Peter’s emotions seemed all wrong (I go into this in excruciating detail, below). Because of that, the ending didn’t make sense to me. It was like Aster had been making a promise to me throughout the movie, a promise that things made sense and would continue making sense from the perspective of the movie, given its particular--and perhaps peculiar--logic. And he broke it (or at least so it seemed).
I felt like a kid on Christmas day who gleefully unwrapped her present only to find a lump of coal. (I was reminded of a line from The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Only in this context I suppose it would be “Life is disappointment, ...”)
I shrugged and tried to put the movie out of my mind.
But I couldn’t do that. There was SOMETHING about the film that lingered with me. I started to think about the film, and the ending, at odd moments throughout the day. I found that I couldn’t just shrug and say, ‘Oh well.’ There was something about the movie, something compelling. It was like a puzzle I couldn’t not work on. I kept wondering how Aster could have done such a brilliant job all the way up to the end and then dropped the ball? And then I asked myself: Which is more likely, that Aster botched the ending or that I had missed something?
I realized I had likely missed something.
That admission took me down a rather deep rabbit hole. I watched Hereditary again, read the screenplay, watched the director's cut of Aster’s latest movie, Midsommer, watched his (disturbing) thesis film, “The Strange Thing About the Johnsons” and looked at hours and hours of commentary on Hereditary, including interviews with Ari Aster himself.
Yes. I am obsessed.
Anyway, I have come to a tentative conclusion. In Hereditary there is a story within a story, one I did not see at first because it is not obvious. Though it isn’t hidden, it’s almost like an optical or auditory illusion, but one having to do with audience expectation.
Every single one of the film critics I watched had, like myself, known going into the theatre that Hereditary was a supernatural horror film.
Think about all the supernatural horror films you’ve ever watched--you know, stories where a demon or fell spirit possesses a human host. The demon is the Big Bad, the villain, and it is the hero’s task to save the world from the evil threat.
What is the least likely thing one would expect from a movie that is billed as a supernatural horror? I’ll leave you with that question for a moment. (I DO answer it, at least I give you my answer for it, below.)
To be honest, I’m nervous about putting my interpretation forward because I don’t think anyone else has looked at Hereditary in quite this way. (Correction: I found two other writers who have put forward something of the same idea. I’ll talk about that in a moment.) This makes me think I can’t be correct, but I can’t get this story out of my head, so I’m going to share my interpretation of the movie with you in the hope that doing so will act as my own exorcism. I need to put these questions to bed. So, please, after you read my crazy musings, tell me what you think. Am I chasing shadows or might I be onto something?
What I want to do in this article
In this article I will, first, give a summary of Ari Aster’s debut movie, Hereditary, and then discuss in detail how it ends, but all the while trying not to bias your interpretation of the ending. Then I will talk about what I think is happening.
(By the way, I have made a video of this review. It is my first attempt at a video review, and there were a couple of glitches. If you’d like to take a look, it’s here: Karen Woodward, YouTube)
Spoiler Warning!!
In what follows I walk through all the main plot points of Hereditary. If you haven’t watched the movie I urge you to grab some popcorn, turn out the lights and enjoy! (And then please come back!)
A summary of Hereditary (2018)
Annie Graham, the protagonist, lives with her husband Steve, their eccentric younger child Charlie, and their elder child, Peter.
Annie is a miniaturist and is currently making dioramas--dollhouses--that represent important scenes from her life from a neutral perspective. Steve is a therapist and seems to be, more or less, the rock of the family. He helps keep the family functioning and sane...well, sane-ish. Charlie is eccentric. She loves chocolate and clicking her tongue, is deathly allergic to nuts and likes constructing macabre manikins by placing a severed animal head (the animal was already dead) on top of a body made of found objects such as discarded bottles. Peter seems mainly interested in smoking marjiuana and trying to get a date with Bridget, a cute girl in his English class.
As the movie opens we see the family attending the funeral of Annie’s mother, Ellen Leigh. We discover that Ellen was controlling and not well liked by anyone in her family. Both Ellen and Annie are wearing a sigil that we will come to discover is that of Paimon, one of the kings of hell.
A week later Ellen’s corpse is dug out of its grave. Steve is told about this but he decides not to inform Annie. Annie seems to sense that Steve is hiding something but rather than confront him she tells Steve that she is going to a movie but, instead, attends a support group for the bereaved. Here Annie confides to the group that her father and brother had struggles with mental illness before they died. Her brother complained that his mother, Ellen, was putting people inside him and hung himself in her bedroom. Annie’s father was depressed and starved himself to death. Annie confesses that she didn’t let her mother near her son, but--perhaps out of guilt--she gave Charlie to Ellen. As one might expect, Charlie and her grandmother became close.
The movie takes a macabre turn when Peter goes to a party one of the teenagers at school is throwing. Peter doesn’t know the person hosting the party, but he thinks the girl he’s crushing on, Bridget, will be attending and hopes to talk to her. Peter asks Annie if he can go--though he lies and says it’s a school party and that there won’t be any alcohol there--and Annie says sure, but forces him to take his sister, saying that the child needs to get out and meet more people.
At the party, Charlie eats chocolate cake that has nuts in it and, because of her nut allergy, her throat begins to swell making breathing difficult. When Peter discovers this he panics, picks Charlie up, carries her out to his car and speeds toward the hospital. On the way there Charlie, gasping for breath, sticks her head out of the window. At this moment Peter notices the body of a deer lying across the road and swerves to miss it. Unfortunately, he drives close to a telephone pole and Charlie is decapitated. (The telephone pole has Paimon’s sigil painted on it.)
Peter is traumatized and drives home with Charlie’s corpse still in the backseat. He parks, turns off the car and goes up to bed. The next morning his mother leaves the house to buy art supplies and notices an odd smell. She investigates and finds the body of her daughter.
Annie is devastated. She can barely stand. Steve, though, is there for both her and Peter.
After this incident, the tension between Annie and Peter is intense. Peter feels incredibly guilty for his role in his sister’s death and Annie blames both Peter and herself.
Annie goes to another support group meeting but then, while still in the parking lot, seems to change her mind. However, before she can drive off a woman (Joan) runs over to her and talks with her. Joan tries to get Annie to come into the meeting and shares with her that she has lost both her son and grandson.
Joan and Annie eventually bond and Joan shows Annie how to perform a seance so that she can communicate with Charlie. Joan says, though, that two conditions must be met for the seance to be successful. First, the entire family must be present in the home when the ritual is performed and, second, she needs an item, something of Charlie’s, to form a link to her. Joan says that she used her grandson’s chalkboard to communicate with his spirit.
Annie chooses Charlie’s sketchbook. In the dark of night, after her family has fallen asleep, she recites the incantation (“Salve Paimon, Rex Occidentalium, ha-Paimon” [10]) and leaves Charlie’s sketchbook open to a blank page for her spirit to draw in. We don’t see this, we hear Annie’s description of this when she, near hysterics, wakes her husband and son to get them to participate in the seance.
Steve is understandably reluctant to go along with Annie’s request. He is worried about Peter, what effect attending a seance to contact his dead sister might have on the teen. Also, Steve seems irritated at Annie. I had the feeling that he was frustrated with himself for not being able to help her and frustrated with her because she wasn’t helping Peter. And Steve was getting tired of being the responsible, sane, person in their relationship.
During the seance, Annie channels a terrified and disoriented Charlie. [8] This surprised everyone. Peter, though, isn’t just surprised, he is terrified. Steve throws water on Annie, breaking her trance.
The day after the seance Peter goes to school and, while there, a spirit attempts to possess him, leading to some very strange behavior. Peter raises his arm and makes a particular shape with his hand (we will come to discover that the shape is reminiscent of Paimon’s scepter). Also, right before the attack, Peter hears a clicking noise that sounds like Charlie. During the incident, Peter thrashes around and bangs his head on his desk, breaking his nose. The pain seems to drive the spirit away. Steve is called and picks up a heavily sedated Peter from the hospital. With Annie’s help, Steve carries his unconscious son to bed.
After the seance, Annie begins to think that Charlie might be malevolent and so throws Charlie’s sketchbook into the fireplace where it catches on fire. As it does, Annie’s arm begins to burn. When she snatches the sketchbook out of the fire the flames licking at her arm go out.
Terrified by this, Annie goes to visit Joan and notices, again, that her confidant’s doormat is very similar to the matts that Ellen used to make. Joan doesn’t answer her door, but the camera goes through the door, revealing part of Joan’s apartment to the viewer. A couple of sigils to Paimon are prominently displayed and a diorama that Charlie was creating has been finished. Three headless mannequins bow before three animal heads. They are all oriented around a miniature upright mannequin wearing the head of a pigeon.
When Joan doesn’t answer, Annie goes back home and finally looks through Ellen’s boxes, desperate to understand what is going on. Annie finds pictures of her mother with Joan about 20 years ago and Joan is wearing Paimon’s sigil, it is the same necklace that Ellen is wearing.
Annie also discovers that her mother was called Queen Leigh and that she led a cult that worshipped Paimon, one of the eight kings of hell. Paimon was said to be the king of hell who was most obedient to Lucifer.
This is from the script:
Annie finds a HIGHLIGHTED PARAGRAPH: "When successfully invoked, Paimon will possess the most vulnerable host. Only when the ritual is complete will Paimon be locked into his ordained host. Once locked in, a new ritual is required to unlock the possession."
A sentence underlined in pencil reads: "Paimon is Male, thus covetous of a male human body."
After this Annie goes into the attic--I’m not sure why she did this, perhaps she had put some of her mother’s things up there and wanted to investigate further. Anyway, Annie finds her mother’s decapitated body. She panics.
This isn’t explicitly shown but I think it is implied that Annie has a chance to calm down afterward and think before Steve comes home with an unconscious Peter in the backseat. One indication of this is that Annie lights the fire BEFORE she asks Steve to go up into the attic and witness for himself the decapitated corpse of her dead mother. I think she does that because she wants to convince Steve that the things she has glimpsed aren’t merely the result of a disordered mind, they are real. She wants Steve to believe her and she wants Steve to throw Charlie’s book of drawings on the fire because she doesn’t think she has the courage to.
Anyway, after Steve and Annie get Peter up to bed she begs her husband to go and look in the attic. Steve is at his wits end and doesn’t want to play along, but he agrees and is shocked to find Ellen’s decapitated body. Steve looks at Annie as though he has never seen her before and asks Annie if she put Ellen’s body in the attic. Annie, truthfully, denies it but Steve no longer trusts her.
Annie now shows Steve her mother’s book of old photographs, she shows him the photos of Ellen and Joan together wearing Paimon’s sigil, but Steve waves it away. He thinks it’s all nonsense. But Annie isn’t going to drop it. She tells Steve that she believes that she brought something evil into their home when she did the seance and that this something has to do with Charlie. Annie wants to do the heroic thing and sacrifice herself for her family. However, she can’t bring herself to throw the book into the flames so she begs Steve to burn the book for her. He refuses. Finally, Annie finds the courage to die for her family and throws the book into the flames expecting to be consumed in a fiery inferno.
But she doesn’t burn. Instead, Steve is set aflame and burns to death.
Annie screams and, mid-scream, appears to become possessed.
A short time after this happens, Peter wakes up.
It is difficult to see, but Annie is in Peter’s room, levitating near the ceiling. Just before Peter looks in her direction she skitters away, moving in jerky crab-like movements over the walls. Eventually, Annie chases Peter through the house and into the attic where, terrified, he seals himself in. But, unfortunately for Peter, members of the cult are already in the attic and let Annie in. While levitating several feet off the floor Annie (this is in full view of Peter) begins to saw off her own head with piano wire.
At just this moment Peter sees three naked cult members hiding in the shadows. This terrifies him even more and he runs out the attic window falling onto the ground below. A moment later a swirl of light enters his body and he gets up. His manner has changed. (The script says: “He seems to be in some sort of TRANCE...”) Then ‘Peter’ clicks his tongue the way Charlie used to.
Haltingly, ‘Peter’ trudges up to the treehouse, following a now headless Annie who levitates up into the treehouse before him.
When ‘Peter’ climbs into the treehouse he finds Joan and several other cult members there, as well as the headless bodies of Annie and Ellen. They are all bowing to a mannequin that has Charlie’s decapitated head resting upon its shoulders. ‘Peter’ seems dazed, traumatized. When he looks back at the headless bodies they now face him. The cult members are now bowing to him.
Joan says to ‘Peter’:
“Hey: hey: Charlie.”
“You’re all right now.”
“You are Paimon. One of the eight Kings of Hell.”
“We have looked to the northwest and called you in. We’ve corrected your first female body and given you now this healthy male host. We reject the Trinity and pray devoutly to you, great Paimon: give us your knowledge of all secret things and all mysteries of the Earth; bring us honor, wealth and good familiars; and bind all men to our Will, as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to Yours.”
Then there is a closeup on ‘Peter.’ In the script it says, “Peter’s eyes are buzzing.”
The final scene of the movie is of a diorama of cultists bowing to Peter who is standing in front of the grotesque mannequin that has the head of his sister on it.
The end.
Interpreting Hereditary
So...what the hell?
There is obviously a lot going on at the end and everything seems to raise more questions than it answers. But we know two things.
First, we know that Charlie was never really Charlie, Charlie was Paimon (Aster confirmed this in his Variety interview, see note 1, below). Also, Paimon didn’t possess Charlie--Charlie wasn’t ‘in in her body’ with Paimon, Charlie was displaced soon after she was born. [1] Instead of possessing Charlie, Paimon was incarnated within her. I believe this difference is important and I’ll discuss it in more detail in a moment.
Second, this family is fated to have this end. Their actions are, and always were, controlled by a cult. [2] This movie is about the end stage of a project that has taken several decades to complete.[3] Three sacrifices were required to put Paimon into a new host. The first sacrifice was Ellen, the second was Charlie/Paimon and the third was Annie. The mechanism of the cult’s fiddling is...well, what to call it other than “fate.” When the cult interferes to ‘tweak’ things, this is heralded by the white light. (I’ll talk more about this in a bit.)
Here’s my take on the ending
My interpretation is fairly novel. I haven’t talked with anyone who shares it and only two other commentators seem to be thinking along the same lines I am (see notes 4 and 8, below). So, make of that what you will.
I think all the events of the movie revolve around the cult, the demon king Paimon, and the difference between possession and incarnation.
Charlie is really Paimon with amnesia
Given that Annie’s daughter was displaced by Paimon from the moment she was born, I will use the name “Charlie” to refer to the demon that inhabited Annie’s daughter’s body.
I’m going to use “Paimon” to refer to the king of hell as he was before he was summoned into the body of Annie’s daughter.
Here’s what I think: Charlie does not know that he is a demon. And why would he? He was raised as a human. First as a baby, then a toddler, then a child, then a young woman. Paimon believes he is a human female. But he is NOT human--he’s a demon incarnated in human form--and that’s one reason why he does not fit in. Still, Charlie is an intelligent being with the capacity to have emotions, one who loves his grandmother and who is worried about who is going to take care of him when his grandmother and mother die.
So, not only does Paimon not know that he is a demon, he doesn’t know he has powers that most people don’t. Or, if he does know, he is smart enough to keep that information to himself. (And, when Paimon uses his power, it isn’t obvious that he is doing it intentionally. For example, I think Paimon killed the pigeon because he was angry at being told to stop working on his mannequin and complete his schoolwork, but he didn’t do it intentionally.)
The Cult’s Problem
Paimon’s amnesia left the cult with a problem. As long as Paimon didn’t know who he was, he couldn't do anything for the cult. They want Paimon to bring them wealth and power but Paimon can’t do either as long as he thinks he’s a teenage girl.
So far I think everything I’ve speculated about is more-or-less on firm ground. It is substantiated by either the script, the movie, or interviews Ari Aster has given.
Now I’m going to guess at something. I think that the cult believed that as long as Paimon was in the body of a female--an unsuitable host--that Paimon could not come to know his true identity. (Or perhaps they simply didn’t want Paimon to realize he was in an unsuitable host. [7]) Perhaps they needed Paimon to possess someone as opposed to being incarnated within someone. I don’t know.
Here’s another guess. I think that Paimon didn’t want to be controlled by the cult. I don’t think he wanted to possess anyone, and I don’t think he wanted to be incarnated. I mean, who would want to be controlled by a cult? They’re a bunch of psychopaths willing to sacrifice those they love so they can bring a demon king into the human world in order to gain wealth and power. It would be difficult to find a more unsympathetic group of people. [4][8]
Recall Annie’s speech during the group therapy session, she said that her father was deeply depressed and had starved himself to death and that her brother complained of his mother trying to put other people inside of him and chose to hang himself in her bedroom. [5]
It could have been that the humans in question objected to their loved one trying to get a demon to possess their mortal forms OR it could be that whenever the cult put Paimon into a human body the demon found a way to kill the body and so be released from his captivity.
So maybe one reason they incarnated Paimon into Annie’s infant daughter’s body was that they didn’t want Paimon to know who he was. They knew he would lose his memory, but that’s what they wanted. That way he’d be easier to control and then they could bind Paimon to their will.[6][7]
Think of the hell Peter must have been in at the end of the movie. The cult has just placed Charlie’s spirit into Peter. This is a possession, so Peter is still there. Charlie loved Peter and vice versa. Yes, Peter had accidentally killed Charlie, but Charlie must have known this was an accident. Perhaps the cult was counting on Charlie’s loving Peter and so not killing him, his body, because of that love. But that’s speculation on my part.
One can ask why the cult began the process of taking Paimon out of Charlie’s body and putting him into Peter’s when they did. I think that the inciting incident was Ellen’s death. She could have asked the cult to kill her, or it could have been a natural death. But now that Peter was more-or-less mature he could be the next, and possibly final, host for Paimon and so it was time. Paimon had the power to animate the dead and so, perhaps, Ellen thought that Paimon would bring her back to some semblance of life. That said, being trapped in a decaying, decapitated, corpse for eternity wouldn’t be my idea of a good time.
The White Light
I’ve got to address this at some point, so I’ll do it now.
Throughout the movie there is a white light that precedes certain significant scenes.
Some people believe that the white light signifies the action of Paimon. I’m not going to say that’s wrong--the cult could somehow have learnt how to harness Paimon’s power without him being aware of what they were doing (again, this could be the result of binding Paimon to their will [6]). But--this is just my idea, I could be completely wrong--I think the white light is two things.
First, it represents the spiritual action of the cult, for example, it represents the action of a spell or, more generally, of their will being enacted in the world. Also, though (and this was suggested by Dan Stubbs in his article Hereditary--baffled by the must-see horror film of 2018? Here are the big questions answered--which I thought was a wonderful insight) the white light does kind of look like the light from Annie’s magnified light (the headgear she wears) as she’s putting together her miniatures. If that’s part of what Aster had in mind, then I think that the white light also represents fate, or at least actions or events that are being dictated by something completely out of one’s control.
Let’s look at some examples.
One of the first times we see the white light is when Charlie is in her room assembling one of her macabre dolls. She notices a white light dancing around the room. This light cannot be Paimon because Charlie IS Paimon, and he’s not doing this. I think this is the cult alone. I think the cult is conducting a ritual and is summoning Paimon. This interpretation is consistent with the script. [11]
Charlie was fond of her grandmother and that’s who she sees in the clearing. She wants to go and meet her gran. (BTW, I think that IF Charlie had gone to meet her gran that she would have been killed and beheaded, but possibly in a less horrific, less disturbing way. But Peter brought Annie’s attention to the fact that Charlie was no longer in the house and so Annie went looking for Charlie and brought her back.)
But there are other times--for instance, when Peter is walking down a hallway in his school we see a white light and shortly afterward Charlie tries to take over Peter’s body. What I think was happening here was that the cult was conducting a ritual and the white light symbolizes the action of the spell. Yes, Charlie/Paimon was involved in the action of that spell, but I believe it was the cult that was guiding Charlie to possess Peter. I doubt the spirit/demon really knew what it was doing.
Given these and similar incidents, I believe that the white light symbolizes the result of the cult’s rituals/spells/ceremonies. It signifies fate. So when we see a white light go into Peter at the end of the movie, yes, that is Charlie/Paimon entering his body, but I think the white light is also the action of the cult’s spell guiding Charlie/Paimon into Peter’s body. I don’t think Charlie/Paimon knew what he was doing, what was going on. After all, when Annie called Charlie into herself during the seance, Charlie had no idea what was happening. [9]
The Difference between Incarnation and Possession
I’ve already touched on this, but I think that Paimon, at the direction of the cult, tried to possess both Ellen’s husband and son, but these attempts were unsuccessful. Since Ellen was diagnosed with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) I would imagine that for at least a little while she was possessed by Paimon. Since this was a possession and not a reincarnation, Ellen was still there, it’s just that there was someone else, another soul/spirit, sharing her body with her.
As I’ve said, I think that when Paimon, when his spirit, was incarnated in human flesh the original soul was, as Ari Aster said, “displaced.” [1] Charlie’s soul left when she was a newborn, displaced so that the demon king Paimon could take up residence. And that’s why Paimon, when in Charlie’s body, had none of his previous memories.
Things that don’t make sense to me
I don’t have an explanation for some things.
Annie is possessed right after Steve bursts into flames, but I don’t believe this is Paimon. For one thing, Paimon doesn’t yet know who he is and so would still act as though he is the spirit of a confused teenage girl. (Think about how Paimon acted when he briefly possessed Annie.) [9] But the mother, as the following poster writers, seems to have a clear intention:
“But what about the mother, Annie? Once she is possessed she seems to act with intention. But I don't think Annie is being controlled by Paimon. I did a little research into Paimon lore, and apparently many old texts say that if you summon Paimon you also have to summon Bebel and Abalam, which are demons that serve him. I think Bebel [Lebel] and Abalam posses [sic] the headless bodies of Annie and the grandmother, Ellen, at the end of the film. I think these two demons were summoned into the Graham household during the quasi-seance.” [4]
The names are actually “Lebel” and “Abalam,” but I think that was just a typo. I’m not sure if the poster is right about this, but it is an intriguing theory. I tend to think that the cult collectively took charge of Annie’s body. But, again, that is speculation on my part.
Another thing that indicates there is at least one other spirit besides Paimon is that, at the end of the movie, Annie (now headless) floats ahead of Peter and levitates up into the treehouse. If Paimon doesn’t know who he is yet then I don’t see how he could be the one who is levitating Annie’s body. So who is it?
I think there are two possibilities. First, as the poster said [4], it could be other spirits that the cult has summoned and has under its control. And this would make sense. After all, it seems unlikely that right out of the gate the cult would set their sites on capturing a king of hell. You’d think they would work their way up to that. But who knows.
Another possibility is that, as I’ve speculated, Annie is being manipulated by the cult themselves. This world is clearly magical and if demons exist and can be summoned and bound, why couldn’t the members of the cult have the ability to control Annie? After all, there is that bottle of green paint that tips over without Annie touching it. Her hand is NEAR it, but never touches it, that’s quite plain. A white light flashes just before this happens and that, I think, suggests the action of the cult.
It could be that, since the cult has bound Paimon to their will [citation], that they can use Paimon’s power without his knowledge. [12]
To Sum Up
When I first watched Hereditary it didn’t seem plausible that Paimon, a king of hell, would be completely freaked out by learning that he was a king of hell. Sure, perhaps at first there would be a bit of confusion, but then his memories would rush in and he would realize: Oh, right! I’m a king of hell and I have these memories and, mwahahahaha, now I can subjugate the world!!!!
Or something.
But that’s not what happens. ‘Peter’ (who is possessed by Charlie/Paimon) is clearly traumatized.
My interpretation hinges upon Peter’s obvious terror at the end. I watched a number of interviews Ari Aster gave, I read the script, I watched the movie again (and again, and again) and, most importantly, I watched the film Aster did for his thesis, “The Strange Thing About the Johnsons.” I won’t go into detail about the plot of that short film, but it has to do with sexual molestation. However, instead of the father molesting his child, the child molests his father. So, in that film, we have an unusual victim. The pattern is turned upon its head. It is the same inversion that we see in Hereditary. Usually, even if the demon loses, he or she is not a victim. But, here, the demon clearly is the victim of the cult.
On this reading the true villain is the humans in the cult. Paimon is nothing more than another pawn in the cult’s game, in their master plan. He is just as much of a victim, a cog, as Annie or Steve or Peter were.
Aster is turning things upside down, subverting one of the mainstays of the horror genre: the evil demon who wants to subjugate mankind.
To answer the question I asked at the beginning of this article, “What is the least likely thing one would expect from a movie that is billed as a supernatural horror?” Well, it is that the demon isn’t evil. It is that the demon is the victim of evil humans. But that’s what we have here, or so I argue.
(Major spoilers for Ari Aster’s next movie, Midsommar.)
By the way, Midsommer--Aster’s second movie--follows this pattern. Who is the victim? It is the emotionally abusive boyfriend. Who is the villain? It is the person who the emotionally abusive boyfriend broke up with--or wanted to break up with. (Yes, the jilted girlfriend had become part of the cult by the end of the movie. And, yes, the girlfriend would not have decided to burn her ex alive if she had not become part of this particular group of people, but still. She is the villain since it is her decision whether to offer up her egotistical and emotionally unavailable ex as a human sacrifice.)
What did you think of the ending of Hereditary? Do you agree with my interpretation? Is there something I’m missing (I’m sure there is!)?
As I mentioned, this is my first video review, but I have been obsessed by Hereditary and decided to go all out. If you’d like to take a look, here’s the link: Karen Woodward, YouTube)
Notes:
1) — In the article, “‘Hereditary’ Filmmaker Ari Aster Answers Burning Questions (Spoilers),” by Jenelle Riley, there is the following exchange:
Q: Annie talks about how her mother got “her hooks” into Charlie at an early age. Are we meant to think Charlie is in on it?
Ari Aster: Charlie is the first successful host for Paimon. It’s transferred from Charlie to Peter at the end.
Q: Because Paimon wants a male body?
Ari Aster: Exactly.
Q: Is there ever a Charlie or is she Paimon from the moment she’s born?
Ari Aster: From the moment she’s born. I mean, there’s a girl that was displaced, but she was displaced from the very beginning.
2) — In the article, “‘Hereditary’ Filmmaker Ari Aster Answers Burning Questions (Spoilers),” by Jenelle Riley, there is the following exchange:
Q: In an early scene, the subject of free will is discussed. Are you saying this family has no free will?
Ari Aster: Yeah, absolutely. I see the film as being very Greek in that sense. This is absolutely inevitable, the family has absolutely no agency.
Q: There is nothing Annie can do to stop this from happening?
Ari Aster: No, I don’t think so. That’s where the dollhouses came in. Annie creates these miniature figures and dollhouses and they served as a perfect metaphor for the situation; they’re dolls in a dollhouse being manipulated by outside forces. Any control they try to seize is hopeless.
3) — In the article, “‘Hereditary’ Filmmaker Ari Aster Answers Burning Questions (Spoilers),” by Jenelle Riley, there is the following exchange:
Q: There’s a lot of talk about what a bad mother Annie’s mother was. Did she just have kids for the purpose of this ritual?
Ari Aster: That’s pretty much what is suggested. If you listen to Annie’s speech at the group therapy, there are a lot of keys in her monologue as to what came before this and how far back this goes.
4) — Posted on Reddit byu/DescartesGospel, 2 years ago
Title: What if Paimon is confused?
“I'm not sure if Paimon realizes who he is. Even at the end. Let me explain:
“Peter, now possessed by Paimon, enters the tree house for the last scene. His expression looks confused to me. I would have expected a triumphant expression. And then Joan calls him by the name "Charlie" before using the name Paimon in a formal, half-shouting sort of way that seems to be part of the ritual. So it would seem that Joan expects Paimon to think of himself as Charlie.
“What if Paimon was incarnated as Charlie in such a way that he didn't retain his memories. That's how re-incarnation is usually thought to work. That would make Charlie a demon spirit in a human body that would have no idea that he was anything other than human. A human with strange tastes, and an odd perspective on the world, but human none the less. This could explain why Charlie seemed bewildered and scarred when she/he was summoned during the quasi-seance, and why Peter possessed looks like he has no idea what is going on?
“But what about the mother, Annie? Once she is possessed she seems to act with intention. But I don't think Annie is being controlled by Paimon. I did a little research into Paimon lore, and apparently many old texts say that if you summon Paimon you also have to summon Bebel and Abalam, which are demons that serve him. I think Bebel and Abalam posses the headless bodies of Annie and the grandmother, Ellen, at the end of the film. I think these two demons were summoned into the Graham household during the quasi-seance.”
5) — Ari Aster said the following about Annie’s speech in group therapy:
In the article, “‘Hereditary’ Filmmaker Ari Aster Answers Burning Questions (Spoilers),” by Jenelle Riley, there is the following exchange:
Q: There’s a lot of talk about what a bad mother Annie’s mother was. Did she just have kids for the purpose of this ritual?
Ari Aster: That’s pretty much what is suggested. If you listen to Annie’s speech at the group therapy, there are a lot of keys in her monologue as to what came before this and how far back this goes.
6) — In the script Joan says the following to Paimon at the end, “...bind all men to our Will, as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to Yours.”
7) — This is part of the text that Annie read from “Invocations,” a book Annie found among her deceased mother’s things:
“When successfully invoked, King Paimon will possess the most _vulnerable_ host. Only when the ritual is complete will King Paimon be locked into his ordained host. Once locked in, a new ritual is required to unlock the possession.
“The Goetia itself makes no mention of King Paimon’s face, while other documentation describes him as having a woman’s face. As a result the sexes of the hosts have varied, but the most successful incarnations have been with men, and it is documented that King Paimon has become livid and vengeful when offered a female host. For these reasons, it is imperative to remember that King Paimon is a male, thus covetous of a male human body.”
8) — The following is from the article, “Hereditary--baffled by the must-see horror film of 2018? Here are the big questions answered,” by Dan Stubbs in NME.
Q: Why didn’t young Charlie act more demonic?
A: No pea soup vomit here. Instead, Charlie is shown as a quiet, distant outsider, a social outcast with some strange habits, such as making toys with ill-fitting heads – more of that later.
Really, this question depends on who you see as being the true evil in Hereditary. Paimon is being used – he didn’t ask to be resurrected, and he seems a bit sad and confused about being on earth. “[Charlie] is a demon,” Alex Wolff, who plays Peter, has said, “But I feel like it’s so interesting – Ari took the approach that she’s not necessarily evil. She’s actually scared, and she’s just in this circumstance. She’s born this way, and she doesn’t feel connected to the rest of the world. And I think it’s kind of a sick, twisted, true analogy about being on the outside and having a mental disorder.” So yeah, granny’s the baddy. Bad gran.
Q: How bad is bad gran?
A: Really bad! Remember the bit in the bereavement support group where Annie says her brother killed himself because mum was “trying to put people inside him” – that’d be Paimon. She’d put demonology – fuelled by greed – before generations of her own family.
9) — This is from the script:
Here is what Annie/Charlie said during the seance (this is from the 11-30-2016 screenplay):
Hello?
Mom?
Mom?!
What’s going on?!
Mom??
What’s happening?! Why is everyone scared?!
WHY ARE YOU SCARING ME?!
Dad! Peter! I’m scared! Where’s mom?!
Peter, what’s going on? Where’s mom?
(Like a scared animal) Why are you trying to scare me?!
10) — The translation (more-or-less) is: Hail Paimon, King of the West! Praise Paimon.
11) — From the script:
INT. CHARLIE’S BEDROOM - THE NEXT DAY 26
Charlie, dressed in her pajamas and munching on M&Ms, sits at her desk. She’s finishing the torso for another small human manikin. The limbs are made of different scraps.
To the side of Charlie’s sculpture-in-progress is the SEVERED PIGEON HEAD. Beside that is Charlie’s drawing pad, open to an unfinished STILL LIFE of the pigeon head. And on the far side of the desk: a crude, bare stage for an unfinished DIORAMA.
Green Rev. (mm/dd/yy) 24.
As she works, Charlie makes the CLICKING SOUND with her tongue.
Suddenly, a GLINT of light sweeps the room in a quick FLASH.
Charlie ceases drawing. Her clicking STOPS. Disturbed by the flash, she raises her head and HOLDS. Listening for something?
After a beat, Charlie rises from her seat and walks to the WINDOW. It’s snowing outside. She stands there for a long time, her back to us. She’s STARING at something...
EXT. WOODS - MINUTES LATER 28
The vast WOODED AREA behind the Graham house. It is still snowing.
Charlie, wearing regular shoes and no coat (and still dressed in her pajamas), takes wide steps as she slogs through the snow.
She gazes listlessly ahead, as if in a TRANCE. She’s being drawn toward something. Like she’s sleepwalking with open eyes.
Max, the family dog, follows happily behind. A FIRE is heard crackling in the distance. Is this what she’s walking toward?
We cut to an EXTREME HIGH ANGLE - almost bird’s eye. This reveals that Charlie seems to be following a FRESH PATH OF FOOTPRINTS (source unknown) leading off-screen.
12) — This is from the script:
At the end of the movie Joan says to Peter/Charlie/Paimon: “…bring us honor, wealth and good familiars; and bind all men to our Will, as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to Yours.”